Kurdish rebels surrender as Turkey reaches out
In the first concrete sign that months of efforts by Turkey’s government to end a 25-year Kurdish insurgency could bear fruit, eight Kurdish rebels crossed over the border from Iraq on Monday to give themselves up.
Accompanied by 26 Kurdish villagers who fled Turkey more than a decade ago, the members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, were detained by police and taken in for questioning by Turkish prosecutors.
Though not the first time such a gesture has been made, it comes months into what Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described as his government’s “democratic opening” to Turkey’s Kurdish population, who make up about a fifth of Turkey’s 70 million inhabitants. The PKK has fought a guerrilla war aimed at separating Kurdish areas from the rest of Turkey. Tens of thousands of people, mostly Kurds, have been killed since the fighting began in 1984. [continued…]
