Deputy Chairman of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has warned against possible assassination of members of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Germany, similar to that in Paris.
Mehmet Ali Şahin, a deputy from Karabük, said in a meeting on Sunday that killing of three PKK-linked Kurdish women, including co-founder of the PKK, is aimed at sabotaging the peace process the government has recently launched to end the perennial Kurdish issue.
"I am afraid similar incidents could take plane in Germany in upcoming days," Şahin said, referring to the killings of the Kurdish women in Paris.
French police have launched an investigation into the killings of the women and several were taken into custody as part of the probe. It is still unclear who the perpetrators are but Turkey and France are pointing to an internal feud as the primary reason of the assassinations.
Şahin’s remarks were designed to highlight the fact that Turkey’s years of criticisms of European nations that harbored PKK members fell on deaf ears and the Europe is coming to understand how dangerous it could be to give PKK members refuge.
One of the contentious issues between Ankara and the European Union is the large number of PKK members and sympathizers who are given an asylum and believed to be funneling money to the PKK, which has staged war against the Turkish state for nearly 30 years, causing the death of at least 40,000 people.
Şahin reiterated what other Turkish officials have been saying for years on Europe’s hosting PKK members, accusing the European nations of protecting the members of the terrorist organization.
"We told them that this organization will become a headache for you and it has started to be a problem," Şahin said, referring to the Paris killings. In previous years, Şahin was a minister of justice in the previous AK Party government.
"We told Europeans that you are nourishing a viper in your bosom but they didn’t take it seriously," Şahin said, adding that European countries either avoided responding to Turkey’s numerous requests for extradition of PKK members or just rejected the demands. The former minister said Europeans have now started to realize what they are facing now and warned against similar killings in Germany that could possibly take place in upcoming days.
Paris killings came at a time when Turkish authorities broke a taboo to directly talk to jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan. The goal of the talks is initially set up to achieve a truce that might create an atmosphere to peacefully find a solution to the conflict.
Şahin hailed the peace process, something unseen in three decades of Turkey’s ferocious struggle against the terrorist organization, and said implicitly acknowledged the failure of ending terrorism by using force.
"It now seems that we can’t handle this problem through security measures," Şahin said. He provided past examples from Spain and Ireland, who also faced a similar threat of violence-based seek of autonomy by minorities and said peace talks have yielded results.
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