On the 19th October 2009 Abdullah Ocalan ordered a PKK Peace Group to enter Turkey with a message that the PKK wanted a peaceful and political settlement to The Kurdish Question in Turkey.
The eight guerilla fighters of HPG were detained upon entry at the Silopi border gate but amazingly released in their full combat uniforms and allowed to address the crowd that had travelled miles to get to the isolated border gate.
Then the PKK Peace Group set off and travelled around the Kurdish towns of Silopi, Cizre and Siirt before arriving at nighttime at Diyarbakir where over one million people had waited all day to greet them. Their bus took all day to travel a short distance through the jubilant crowds of supporters and stopping for many rallies. This was truly a historic day!
Please watch these videos, and these of the day, because when you do you get a sense of the mood and the situation very well.
These are the PKK Guerilla Fighters of the HPG (People's Defence Forces) who are being welcomed as their heros by the Kurdish people.
Throughout the videos you will here some same chants from the crowds, "PKK are the People, the People are PKK!" is one.
"Biji Serok Apo/Long live our Leader Apo/Abdullah Ocalan" is another.
This was only in October of last year. Since then the Turkish Government have closed down the legal Kurdish Parliamentary Party, DTP and conducted raids of over 1,000 Kurdish politicians including elected Mayors of the newly established Kurdish party, BDP, hoping to crush the Kurdish Freedom Struggle. The Eight Kurdish Freedom Fighters from the Peace Group have also been arrested.
This suppression has been tried before and failed. It only makes the Kurdish Resistance stronger.
By closing the democratic road for the Kurds by wholesale arrest and detention of Kurdish representatives the Turkish government are seeking revenge for the massive electoral defeat suffered by AKP at the last elections, of March last year, in NW Kurdistan (SE Turkey) and are provoking the Kurdish side to continued military conflict.
Unless there is political progress made in the next few weeks it is hard to see how the Kurdish side can continue to bear and sacrifice so much before the political decision is made that Turkey is not interested in peace and that the only lever that can be applied is by armed resistance to this policy of denial and suppression of the Kurds.
Hope for a peaceful solution is fading fast!
