Türkiye is getting closer to its terror-free goal step by step, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Monday.
“The end of the road is near for terrorism barons who have deceived and abducted the youths of this country to the mountains,” Erdoğan told a congress meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) youth branches in the capital Ankara.
“We will not allow our youths to disappear between the barbarous teeth of terrorism,” he said.
Erdoğan’s remarks come amid an initiative by his government to end 40 years of PKK terrorism.
The PKK has waged a terror campaign against Türkiye since 1984, initially to establish a so-called Kurdish state in the southeast of the country. It has spread beyond Türkiye's borders into Iraq and Syria and has killed tens of thousands of people.
The PKK is proscribed to be a terrorist group by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union. In its 40-year campaign, the group has been notorious for deceiving children into going up the mountains where they were taught to fight against Turkish security forces in the name of their jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan. Thousands of child recruits either committed suicide or were killed while trying to escape the organization.
The average age of a child in the terrorist organization is 15, according to Turkish security sources and due to a decrease in the number of volunteers in recent years, the group strives to fill the gap by recruiting minors.
International organizations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also report that the PKK's youth group continues to fraudulently and forcibly recruit and use children” in violation of various international conventions and regulations.
Öcalan nowadays is at the heart of the terror-free initiative launched by Erdoğan’s government ally, Devlet Bahçeli, the head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who has been traditionally a hardliner against any concessions to the PKK.
Lawmakers from the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) affiliated with the PKK have met Öcalan twice since Bahçeli in October made a historic call that Öcalan could be granted parole if he renounces violence and disbands the PKK.
"Reinforcing the Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood is a historic responsibility and is a matter of importance and emergency for all peoples," Öcalan said in his first statements quoted by the DEM Party after the December visit.
Öcalan said it was essential for all political circles in Türkiye to take the initiative without being confined to "narrow calculations," "act constructive" and "provide a positive contribution" for this new process to succeed. Öcalan said the Parliament he was urged to come to would be "undoubtedly one of the most important grounds for 'this contribution.'"
He is expected to urge the PKK to lay down arms in a statement that could be announced in the coming weeks, according to the DEM Party last week.
