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| Iraq |
| Kurdish Activist In Iraq |
| 2006-04-27 |
| Istanbul, 27 April (AKI) - Turkish politician and Kurdish rights activists Leyla Zana continued her visit to Iraq on Thursday, in part of an effort to find a political solution to growing violence between the Turkish state and Kurdish separatists which threatens to spill over into Iraq's Kurdish regions. Zana's Iraqi trip which began Monday came after a statement from Turkey's military chief of staff, Hilmi Ozkok, that Turkish troops could enter northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) separatists based there. Ankara has blamed the PKK of for being behind a wave of riots and bombings that have hit Turkey's Kurdish eastern region and some of the country's largest cities. Zana, a former parliamentarian for the pro-Kurdish HEP party, who was released from a Turkish jail in 2004 after serving 10 years for alleged links to the PKK, was the 1995 recipent of the EU's Sakharov Human Rights award. On Tuesday during her meeting in Erbil with Mesut Barzani, president of Iraq's Kurdistan autonomous region and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Zana, discussed the increased number of Turkish troops stationed in southeast of Turkey along the border with Iraqi Kurdistan. Barzani told Zana that he believed Turkish Kurds could gain their rights by peaceful means, Kurdistan TV reported. "Radicalism is over. Toughness just brings blood. Everyone realises that it is impossible to achieve our aims through weapons. We can succeed if we get together," Barzani was quoted as saying. Barzani called Zana the ‘symbolic hyacinth of the Kurds’ in Turkey, welcoming her peace-seeking efforts. On Wednesday, Zana visited the Kurdistan regional parliament, and met Kurdistan's prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani and the parliament's president Adnan Muftu. Zana is scheduled to meet Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, who is a Kurd, later on Thursday. The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed an estimated 37,000 lives since 1984 when the PKK took up arms for self-rule in southeastern Turkey. |
| Posted by:Steve |