To End Kurdish Conflict, Turkey Calls on Archenemy
LONDON — Turkish intelligence agents have been making the short hop from Istanbul across the Sea of Marmara to the prison Island of Imrali in recent weeks for talks with a jailed Kurdish separatist leader who was once Turkey’s most wanted man.
Abdullah Ocalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the P.K.K., has been languishing on Imrali since he was captured in Nairobi in 1999 while on the run. He is serving a life term after a death sentence was commuted.
Now the Turkish government wants his help to end a resurgent war with P.K.K. rebels that has claimed around 900 lives in the past year and a half.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, revealed the dialog last week when he told state-run TRT television, “I cannot hold such meetings myself as a politician, but the state has agents and they do.”
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/hoping-to-end-decades-long-kurdish-conflict-turkey-calls-on-archenemy/
