Erdogan: No room for dialogue with Kurds

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. File photo

Published by ARA News 5 April 2016

ANKARA – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday ruled out reviving peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), vowing to finish off the conflict–that was resumed in July 2015 after two years of peace talks which were supposed to end a three-decade conflict between the Turkish authorities and the PKK.

“We said ‘resolution process’, and they deceived us, their word cannot be trusted. That’s over now, we are going to finish this off,” Erdogan said in a speech to the state-run Red Crescent humanitarian organization.

“The terrorists can choose two paths: surrender to justice or be neutralized, one by one. There is no third way left in Turkey. We tried that repeatedly in the past,” he said.

Erdogan denied recent rumors about contacts between his government and the PKK.

He pointed out that 400 government forces and thousands of PKK rebels have been killed since July.

Human rights activists and opposition groups reported that nearly 1000 civilians have been killed in Kurdish areas of Turkey’s southeast since July.

“The Turkish army avoids mentioning the civilian casualties in its brutal campaign against the Kurdish region,” civil rights activist Ehmed Hokenek told ARA News in Cizre in an earlier interview.

“The Turkish bombardment has caused mass displacement among civilians, destruction of infrastructures and death of dozens of civilians in Cizre alone,” Hokenek said. “The casualties are being carefully documented, and our teams are trying to do the same in other Kurdish provinces, with a hope that the international community would ever take action and stop this brutal military campaign against the Kurds.”

Violence has raged in Turkey’s Kurdish region since July subsequent to the collapse of peace talks–aimed at ending a three-decade conflict that claimed lives of over 40,000 people since 1984.

Reporting by: Eyaz Ciziri

Source: ARA News

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