Special to WorldTribune.com

ANKARA — Turkey has been negotiating a disarmament agreement with
the Kurdish Workers Party.

Officials said Turkey’s intelligence community was examining the
prospect of a long-term ceasefire with the PKK. They said the intelligence
community offered the PKK a range of options after Ankara determined that
Kurdish insurgents could not be defeated militarily.

“The main aim for the government is to disarm them,” Yalcin Akdogan, the chief adviser to Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, said. “You cannot get results and abolish an organization only with armed struggle.”

In an interview on Turkish television on Dec. 31, Akdogan became the
first senior official to confirm secret negotiations between Ankara and PKK. Akdogan said the effort could be vetoed by the PKK leadership in Iraq.

“We have to see how [the PKK command in] Kandil will react,” Akdogan said. “The organization also saw that they cannot get anywhere through armed struggle.”

Officials said Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency has been discussing a
ceasefire with PKK chief Abdullah Ocalan, in jail since 1999. They said
intelligence directors met Ocalan several times, the last of which took place on Dec. 23.

“The intelligence services are in talks with him,” Akdogan said.
Turkey was said to have offered PKK commanders amnesty as well as exile
in exchange for disarmament. Turkish reports identified one haven as
Australia.

Officials said 2012 marked the bloodiest year for the PKK in decades.
Over the last 18 months, more than 1,000 Turkish soldiers and civilians were
killed in PKK ambushes near the border with Iraq.

“I cannot hold such meetings myself as a politician but the state has
agents and they do [hold talks],” Erdogan said in another television
interview. “The meetings on are still under way because we must get a
result. As long as we see a light [in the potential for a result], we
continue to take steps. If there is no light, we will stop there.”

  Abdullah Ocalan, disarmament, Kurdish Workers Party, Recep Erdogan, Turkey seeks ceasefire with Kurdish Workers Party, Yalcin Akdogan