IRAQ-IRAN BORDER, Nov 15: The rebel Turkish Congress for Democracy and Freedom in Kurdistan (KADEK) — the former PKK — said on Saturday it was no longer fighting for self-rule in Turkey and urged Ankara to open dialogue.

“We call on the Turkish authorities to abandon their bankrupt policies and enter a dialogue,” the group said in a statement that also announced another change of name to the People’s Congress of Kurdistan.

“The People’s Congress of Kurdistan does not aim at division or separation. On the contrary, it aims at a contemporary democratic union respecting the unity of state,” it said, urging the Turkish government to “respect democracy”.

“It believes that this approach responds to the vital needs both of Kurds and the neighbouring nation states. The developments in the region and the EU membership run-up (for Turkey) facilitate a solution of this type,” the statement said.

“It aims at preventing the use of reciprocal violence fused by nationalist sentiment and providing a non-violent solution that will make it possible to transform the Kurdish existence in the Middle East from a cause of crisis into a source of energy.”

However Zubeyir Aybar, 42, who was appointed the leader of the Congress, said the group would not disarm.

“The arms will stay as long as there is no solution to the Kurdish issue (...) for self-defence,” he said.

On Tuesday, KADEK, which as the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) waged a 15-year separatist war on Ankara, announced in Iraq that it was disbanding in order to set up a more democratic Kurdish organization.

Both Turkey and the United States dismissed the move.

The State Department said the decision to rename itself would make no difference to US policy.

“Through its recent actions, the (PKK/KADEK) appears to be making an effort to evade responsibility for its terrorist acts by changing its name,” a Turkish spokesman said in a statement.

“The PKK/KADEK, under any alias, is a terrorist organization, and no name change or press release can alter that fact,” he said.

The spokesman hoped the US-led forces in Iraq would not tolerate the presence of the group in any incarnation.

Turkish officials quickly dismissed the group’s move as a tactic to shrug off their violent image and ward off a possible US clampdown on their bases in northern Iraq.

KADEK decided unanimously to dissolve at congress in northern Iraq on Oct 26.

It is the direct successor of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which fought a bloody struggle against Turkey for Kurdish self-rule until Sept 1999, when it declared a unilateral ceasefire.

The ceasefire followed the capture in Feb 1999 of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a remote prison island in Turkey.

The PKK changed its name to KADEK in April last year and vowed to pursue democratic means to resolve the conflict with Turkey, but still has forces based in northern Iraq.

Turkey holds the PKK responsible for the death of 36,500 people, many of them rebels, killed in fighting since 1984, the year the PKK took up arms for self-rule in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast. —AFP