Prashant Rao ARABNEWS
Saturday 23 March 2013
Abdullah Ocalan’s cease-fire call marks a key turning point for the Kurdish nation that 25 years ago was hit by the deadliest use of chemical weapons ever and had begun an armed conflict for independence.
The cease-fire call, set out in a letter penned by the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from his isolated island cell, raises hopes for a permanent end to a three-decade conflict with Turkey that has cost tens of thousands of lives, most of them Kurds.
But though it is the latest in a series of positive steps, Kurdish populations in Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran still face serious long-term questions over the relationships their regions will have to often unsympathetic central governments.
The cease-fire call “will have momentous implications for the broader Kurdish movements in the region,” said Jane Kinninmont of London-based Chatham House.
“It may signal that there are more options for Kurdish aspirations to be strengthened within the existing regional state system.”
But, she noted, “there is a tension between the idealism of these dreams (of a pan-Kurdish state) and the realism of political leaders operating within the Middle East system of nation-states that are all multiethnic and multi-religious but have latent fears of their own fragmentation.”
Categories: Arab World, Asia, Iraq, Syria, Turkey