PKK warns Ankara peace talks ‘near critical end point’

ANKARA, Turkey – The peace process between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish government is at a “dangerous stage” and nearing a “critical end point,” the PKK’s umbrella group warned.

"Our movement is at a phase of critical and serious thinking and of taking new decisions,” the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) said in a statement reported by the pro-PKK Firat News Tuesday.

The KCK warned that Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had to take concrete steps toward peace with the PKK, otherwise the process was “at an extremely dangerous stage and near the critical end point.”

Turkey and the PKK have upheld a ceasefire since March 2013, bringing an end to a three-decade long conflict that has cost over 40,000 lives. 

Turkey still considers the party a terrorist organization, but last year it approved legislation that made the peace talks legal. 

Turkish inaction during the siege of the Syrian border town of Kobane enraged the PKK’s support base in Turkey and threatened to derail talks, which PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan has been conducting from his Turkish jail cell.

The fragile peace process deteriorated further in mid-October when Turkish jets bombed a village near the Iraqi border in retaliation for gun attacks on the town’s police station.

The talks suffered a final setback last month, following deadly clashes in the southeastern city of Cizre between PKK supporters and the Kurdish Islamist Huda Par, which Ankara had tried to bring into the peace process over PKK objections.

In the statement reported by Firat News, the KCK blamed “the AKP's policies and the AKP's approach to the negotiations” for the process not moving forward.