What happened this morning is quite extraordinary.
The imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),
Abdullah Öcalan, released a message calling for peace in southeast Turkey.
Tens of thousands of people turned out in Diyarbakır to hear
it.
The message, to mark the Kurdish new year of Nowruz, was
read out in Kurdish and Turkish.
The PKK leader called for his organisation's armed militants
to retreat across the border back into northern Iraq. He did not ask them to
disarm.
Police were heavily present at the event, but there were no
major disturbances.
Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was grumpy
that only Kurdish flags – and no Turkish star-and-crescent – was flown at the
rally. His interior minister said he "violently condemned" that omission.
But the mood of the prime minister, who is visiting the
Netherlands today, was generally
accommodating. He described Abdullah Öcalan's call on militants to leave
Turkey as "a positive development" and added he was waiting to see
whether it would be obeyed. If it is, he said, the military operation in the
region would "end of its own accord".
The governing AK Party's cautious optimism was met with
outrage from the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and utter silence from the
Republican People's Party (CHP).
The MHP leader, Devlet Bahçeli, was scathing: "We do
not recognise the Nowruz in Diyarbakır. A Nowruz celebrated in this manner is
not this nation's festival. A celebration without the Turkish flag cannot
contain messages of brotherhood and unity. The Turkish nation is watching this
scenario as a lesson of disgrace.
"This," he continued, "is the beginning of separatism."
CHP MPs, meanwhile, have been ordered by their leader
not to comment in the media.
A ceasefire was always going to be only the first step in a
long and difficult peace process. But that does not make it any less significant.
A Turkey that no longer deploys troops against its own citizens will be a
stronger, freer one.
It is important not to forget that previous ceasefires have
been declared and all have fallen through. This one needs to stick.
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