PKK vows to intensify militant attacks against Turkish forces
A leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) says the group will boost its assaults on Turkish army forces if the Ankara government continues its military campaign against the Kurds.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “wants the Kurds to surrender. If they don’t surrender, he wants to kill all Kurds. He says this openly, he doesn’t hide it,” Cemil Bayik said in an interview with the BBC news network published on Monday.
He added, “The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approach, of course the PKK will escalate the war.”
Bayik further insisted that the PKK does not intend to create a separate Kurdish state within Turkey.
“We don’t want to divide Turkey. We want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely... The struggle will continue until the Kurds’ innate rights are accepted,” he said.
He went on to say that the Turkish government’s intransigence has made the PKK ready to intensify the conflict “not only in Kurdistan, but in the rest of Turkey as well.”
Bayik said the Turkey-PKK conflict “can only be resolved through negotiations,” stressing that the PKK would engage in dialog only if “the Turkish state gives up its genocidal politics.”
Bayik also touched upon the situation of PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan, who is incarcerated in the prison island of Imrali on the Marmara Sea, saying that Ankara must improve his prison conditions before any ceasefire talks could resume.
“For over a year, there have been no visits to him, there is no information on or from him. There cannot be any negotiations under these circumstances,” he said.
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