“5 minutes to election: What happened during 20 days of PKK inaction in Turkey?”

The Kurdistan Communities of Women (KJK) has published a new information file called 5 minutes to election: What happened during 20 days of PKK inaction in Turkey? which provides a useful summary of events in Kurdistan since the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire on 10 October. The report details an alarming number of state-sponsored attacks on the AKP’s political opposition, including curfews in Kurdish districts, raids on HDP offices and military strikes against the PKK.

The report begins with this statement below and is available to download in full here (pdf).

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Interview with Hozat, Karayılan and Bayık

Below we reproduce an interview with the two new co-chairs of the executive council of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), Bese Hozat and Cemil Bayik, and the former KCK chairman Murat Karayilan.

By ANF BEHDİNAN

July 2013

The two new co-chairs of the executive council of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), Bese Hozat and Cemil Bayık as well as the former KCK chairman of the executive council and the current supreme commander of the Kurdish Peoples’ Defence Forces (HPG) Murat Karayılan, talked to the news agency Firat (ANF) after the exceptional 9th general assembly of Kongra-Gel. During the general assembly the democratic solution process was the main topic. In this interview Karayılan explained that the coming weeks will be of great importance. ‘With the current attitude of the government, the process will not progress further. Even though the process has not come to a standstill yet, it is at risk of coming to a halt,’ explained Karayılan.

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