Seoul Gazette - Turkey arrests 282 despite reconciliation bid with PKK

Ankara is seeking to revive peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), designated as a terror group by Turkey and its Western allies, that have been frozen for a decade.

The process began when a hardline nationalist party unexpectedly offered an olive branch to jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan in October.

The raids began five days ago and have so far taken place in 51 cities including Istanbul, Ankara and the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir in the southeast, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X.

On Tuesday, the authorities issued arrest warrants for 60 people, including members of the main pro-Kurdish DEM party, several left-wing figures and journalists. All were detained over alleged terror ties, the Istanbul prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Fifty-two have been detained so far.

Among them were three journalists, the Turkish Journalists Union said.

"It is unacceptable that they were detained during raids on their homes rather than being summoned to the police station" for questioning, it said.

- Keeping the upper hand -

Writing on X, DEM said "Turkey woke up today with another operation" against its members.

"It's clear that the prospect of a solution and peace is beginning to keep some people awake at night," it said.

Sinan Ulgen, an analyst with Carnegie Europe in Ankara, said the government's objective was to start the negotiations with DEM having the upper hand.

"It sends the message that if these negotiations don't succeed, there is always this scenario of greater pressure on the members of DEM," he told AFP.

Since late December, a DEM delegation has twice visited Ocalan and held follow-up talks with Turkey's main parliamentary factions.

On Sunday, the delegation travelled to Iraq to meet Kurdish representatives.

Militants from Ocalan's PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, operate out of Iraq's Kurdistan region, where Turkey also has military bases.

The delegation will hold more talks with Kurdish officials in the city of Sulaymaniyah on Tuesday, including the autonomous region's deputy prime minister Qubad Talabani.

In October, the hardline nationalist MHP leader Devlet Bahceli urged Ocalan to renounce violence in exchange for a possible early release from Imrali island, where he has been serving life in solitary confinement since 1999.

Backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the call has renewed hopes of an end to the conflict that claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Ocalan is widely expected to call on for his followers to lay down their arms in the coming weeks with Kurdish politicians confident it will be no later than Newroz, the Kurdish New Year, in March.

- Little faith -

But many in the southeast have little faith the current initiative will work, recalling the tremendous backlash of violence that erupted when the last peace initiative shattered in 2015.

"Elected mayors are removed, there are ongoing police raids and journalists are rounded up," Zeki Celik, who runs a silver workshop, told AFP in Diyarbakir.

"There's been mistrust, so we don't find it credible."

Since last year's local elections, nine DEM mayors have been removed and replaced by government-appointed administrators.

Gonul Tol, head of the Turkish studies programme at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said Erdogan was following a two-pronged approach.

"On the one hand, he's pursuing these talks with the PKK, but the second track is that he never actually really wholeheartedly owned it," she told AFP.

"Instead, he kept saying that this was an initiative led by Devlet Bahceli," she said.

"And that second track also included 'business as usual' with the Kurds, meaning targeting them, jailing them, appointing mayoral replacements, thus capturing democratically-elected Kurdish municipalities."

H.Baek--SG