Goring Oxen

"Ocalan has paved the way for a historic peace process. He has declared in no uncertain terms that the era of an armed struggle is ending.
"But the total laying down of arms will depend on steps the government will take."
Mesut Yegin, Sehir University, Istanbul

Turkey in fact was in talks with the jailed PKK leader. He has been incarcerated for the last 14 years, but he has great influence within the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The talks had the purpose of persuading the PKK leader to agree to disarm. Tens of thousands of Turks and Kurds have died over the decades of violence that has ensued resulting from the Kurds' battle for borders of their very own homeland.

Kurds live in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. The artificial borders that define those countries encompass traditional Kurdish territory, where Kurds have always lived. They represent the largest ethnic group in the world without a defined homeland of their own. They have long been restively involved in advocating for their own country to hold their nation, and have seen bitter resistance and violence in response.

In Iraq 25 years ago, Saddam Hussein sent helicopter gunships to drop nerve gas on the Kurdish town of Halabja, murdering five thousand Kurds in the process. Chemical warfare. The use of deadly chemical agents, in a horribly destructive mass murder attack. Now, with Saddam Hussein long removed, there is a Kurdish faction in the Iraqi government, and Kurds in their part of Iraq are semi-autonomous.

Their area, in fact, represents the only really peaceful portion of the country, well-administered and well endowed with petroleum resources, shared with the government. While in the rest of the country, bitter animosity between Shia and Sunni Muslims continues to wreak atrocities with mass killings through deadly suicide bombings.

Turkey had been concerned that while the civil conflict in Syria is raging, President al-Assad might contrive to have Syrian Kurds foment revenge violence alongside Turkey's Kurds in a united front against the Turkish government. Abdullah Ocalan, wants nothing more than most ethnic groups feel is their birthright; a home of their own. He sought greater autonomy and human rights for his people.

The reaction of the Turkish government to his call for a "new era" of peace has been muted, guarded, uncertain. While the Kurds themselves are overjoyed, happy to lay down their arms. "We have reached the point where the guns must be silenced and where ideas must speak. A new era has started, where politics not guns, are at the forefront", announced Ocalan from his prison cell.

"A door is opening from the armed struggle toward the democratic struggle. This is not an end. this is a new start. We have reached the stage where our armed elements need to retreat beyond the border", he said. And isn't it a strange coincidence that the Government of Turkey, while welcoming the statement, waits to see its implementation, according to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"We need to see to what extent [the rebels] respond to it." Mr. Erdogan is passionate about the right of the Palestinians to have a country of their own, and condemns Israel for standing in the way of that achievement. Somehow, he overlooks the need of the Kurds to have a land of their own, unwilling to allow any separation of land that Turkey holds to allow that to happen. Turkey's excuse is its indivisible sovereignty. Whereas in Turkey's opinion, Israel is maliciously mendacious over the matter.

Turkey has other problems in the famed annals of whose ox is being gored. It has assumed friendly relations with Iran, while dropping its once-close relationship with Israel. Perhaps the Islamist ties that bind were just too compelling for the status quo to continue. Iran, it will be recalled, while promising Israel a nuclear holocaust, consistently spurns the very idea that a Nazi-inspired holocaust ever occurred.

Just as Turkey resists the admission that it once engaged in a holocaust of its own, one the Armenian people will never forget.