Kyle OrtonVerified account

Bayik notes #PKK was "born in 1978 [and] launched a guerrilla war in 1984". In that gap, the PKK, which spent all its time in #Turkey fighting the Left and other Kurds, moved to Syria and Lebanon to be built into an army by the #Soviets, using #Asad and the #PLO as cut-outs.

#PKK leader Cemil Bayik in his WaPo op-ed skips over the return to violence by the #PKK in 2004 entirely, and then misrepresents how the second ceasefire broke down in 2015, blaming #Turkey. In fact, the PKK murdered several policemen, claiming it as "revenge" for an #IS attack.

Likewise, #PKK leader Cemil Bayik is quite right to note the grim toll #Turkey's operations in the south-east in 2015-16 took on Kurdish civilians, yet fails entirely to point out that it was his group's insane decision to seize urban centres that led to this disaster.

#PKK leader Cemil Bayik carefully offers support to the #YPG/#PYD in Syria without conceding that these forces operate under his command. And when admitting mistakes, the only one he concedes is trusting #Erdogan, which is not quite self-criticism in the traditional sense.

As written, there is little to quarrel with in Cemil Bayik's proposed solution to the Kurdish Question in #Turkey: a more democratic and decentralized political settlement. But it comes with ill-grace from as authoritarian and centralized an organization as the #PKK.