Kurdish guerrillas fighting Turkish forces no longer believe they can achieve their aims through violence and would disarm if their leader were freed from prison, a former commander says.
Osman Ocalan, the younger brother of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) jailed leader Abdullah "Apo" Ocalan, said in an interview the stalemate in its 25-year-long armed campaign for autonomy in south-eastern Turkey would continue without a political solution.
Ocalan said he had had no contact with his brother for three years and split from the PKK in 2004, but remained in contact with rebels in the mountains on the Iraq side of the border.
"No side can win this war, it is impossible," he told Reuters in northern Iraq. "Even if the PKK takes a blow, there are more people willing to take those places. The PKK can always replenish itself. "If Turkey doesn't force it, the PKK won't fight. That's why tensions have fallen." Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's efforts to expand cultural rights for Kurds offer the best chance for peace in a decade, Ocalan, 60, said.
"If Apo were put under house arrest, and a dialogue was started with him, then this issue would be solved in three to five months. Nobody in the PKK would oppose this," he said. The PKK leadership, based in the remote mountains on the Iraq-Iran border, had not believed in a military solution for least six years, Ocalan said.
In the first violence in months, two Turkish soldiers were killed last week in explosions in eastern Turkey. Fighting has declined sharply since the 1999 capture of Abdullah Ocalan. The United States and the European Union have categorised the PKK as terrorists. Belgian authorities arrested eight people on March 4 suspected of helping to recruit PKK fighters.
Turkish authorities have ruled out releasing Abdullah Ocalan, whom they blame for the deaths of more than 40,000 people since the PKK took up arms in 1984. A military court sentenced him to death, but that was commuted to life imprisonment in 2002 after the death penalty was abolished.
Osman Ocalan left the PKK six years ago after what he described as a power struggle with its current leaders. The PKK has scaled down its demand for an independent state to greater cultural rights for Turkey's estimated 15 million Kurds. Turkey has said it will never negotiate with the PKK.
Erdogan's government has eased restrictions on broadcasting and teaching the Kurdish language, which was banned until 1991. Last year, it pledged an initiative to expand Kurdish rights in an effort to end the war. The PKK had about 3,500 fighters in heavily fortified encampments in northern Iran and Iraq and a further 1,500 in Turkey, Ocalan said. Funding came solely from Kurdish expatriates in Europe and "customs taxes" on smugglers and amounted to about $20 million a year, he said.
The Turkish army regularly shells PKK encampments in northern Iraq, which is administered by Iraqi Kurds with whom Turkey has improved relations after launching a ground offensive in 2008 with 10,000 troops to weed out the PKK in the region.
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