AMSTERDAM — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has welcomed the Kurdish rebel leader's call for a ceasefire and for thousands of his fighters to leave Turkey. Erdogan Thursday also sounded a note of caution, however, saying Turkey wanted to see “to what extent it is implemented” by the rebels. Erdogan was speaking at a joint news conference with his Dutch counterpart. Erdogan said Turkish security forces would cease operations against the rebels as soon as Abdullah Ocalan's call is implemented. The Turkish leader also lamented the fact that no Turkish flag was flown at festivities in Turkey's largest city of Diyarbakir where Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Ocalan's message was read. Erdogan says the lack of a flag was a “provocative act” and contrary to spirit of Ocalan's message for peace. Earlier Ocalan ordered his fighters to cease fire and withdraw from Turkish soil as a step to ending a conflict that has killed 40,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds gathered in Diyarbakir cheered and waved banners bearing Ocalan's moustachioed image when a letter from the rebel leader, held since 1999 on a prison island in the Marmara Sea, was read out by a pro-Kurdish politician. “Let guns be silenced and politics dominate,” he said to a sea of red-yellow-green Kurdish flags. “The stage has been reached where our armed forces should withdraw beyond the borders ... It's not the end. It's the start of a new era.” Erdogan has taken considerable risks since he was elected in 2002, breaking taboos deeply rooted in a conservative establishment, not least in the military, by extending cultural and language rights to Kurds. “There is a strategic shift happening,” said Ertugrul Kurkcu, a parliamentarian from the pro-Kurdish BDP party. “The Kurdish liberation movement is moving from an armed campaign to a cultural one. And the PKK accepts this.” At a cafe in Diyarbakir, student Resan Erdogan, 25, a Kurd who shares the prime minister's surname, said a PKK withdrawal too early in the peace process would be disastrous for Kurds. “The PKK is our insurance. Any rights we have gained are because they fought for them,” he said as the sound of fighter jets from the city's air base thundered above, a reminder of the heavy military presence Turkey maintains in the region. Abdullah Demirbas, a Diyarbakir district mayor, said there were likely to be more attempts to sabotage the process ahead. “There are deep forces who want war and they are pervasive. They feed off blood,” he said. — Agencies
