Turkey seeks to end Kurdish conflict

— For a quarter century, defeating the Kurdish insurgency has been a pillar of Turkish state policy. Now, that's being called into question as the government takes stock of the fight's cost and its role in hampering Turkey's ambitions for regional leadership.

The struggle against the Kurdish guerrilla organization, marking the 33rd anniversary of its foundation Sunday, has claimed tens of thousands of lives and cost Turkey hundreds of billions of dollars.

Turkey has superior firepower and now U.S. supplied drones to fight the rebels, but there's not clear path to victory. The government recently left the door open for future dialogue with the rebels while vowing to fight maintain its military drive until they lay down arms.

"We say it very clearly: We will struggle against terrorism until the end, but we will also negotiate with those who prefer politics," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late September. "Those who prefer politics can talk to us, others can't."

Analysts said the two-pronged message appeared aimed at keeping pressure on the Kurds while encouraging them to reach a political solution to the conflict.

In another gesture, Erdogan apologized Wednesday for the first time for the killings of nearly 14,000 people in a bombing and strafing campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion in the southeastern town of Dersim - now known as Tunceli - between 1936 and 1939.

While the apology was less a policy shift than a political tactic to tarnish the reputation of the opposition party, which was in power at that time, it still signaled a softening of lines toward the Kurds.

Meanwhile, Turkey, a U.S. ally and the largest Muslim member of NATO, is basking in growing popularity in an Arab world being transformed by revolution, even as the nation's aspirations to join the European Union stagnate.

Turkey's Islam-based government, praised for economic stability since coming to power 2002, believes a solution to the Kurdish conflict would enable the country to transfer its energy and resources to development, and eventually make it a more powerful actor in the Middle East.

"God willing, Turkey will fly when we solve this terrorism problem and traitors' actions that we see as the biggest obstacle that blocks Turkey path are ended," Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said Friday.

The government has recently admitted to holding secret talks with the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK last year but it was not clear whether the sides were again conferring amid an intensified fight that has killed dozens of rebels, Turkish soldiers and since this summer.

Erdogan said this week that he "fully supports" the arrests of hundreds of alleged PKK supporters, including more than 40 Kurdish lawyers - who are accused of relaying orders from imprisoned rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan and running their own courts in a separate power structure.

Kurdish lawmakers said the government was waging a campaign of intimidation.

The PKK was founded Nov. 27, 1978, but it began fighting for autonomy in the country's largely Kurdish southeast in 1984. The government has granted more cultural rights to the Kurdish minority such as broadcasts in the once-banned Kurdish language on state television, in a failed effort at reconciliation.


