Hurriyet published an article by Cihan Celik headlined '‘Deep,’ old habits on Kurdish women’s killings.' "If sorted out from the floating theories on the culprits and their motivations, what the execution-style killings of three female Kurdish activists in Paris showed was that the conflicting parties, and third actors, of the long-standing conflict in Turkey over the Kurdish issue still maintain their deep-rooted, old habits," the article begins.
"The violent killings of the three women, including Sakine Cansız, a founding member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), came amid the rising optimism over Turkish intelligence-initiated talks between the government and the jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, and regardless of what the authorities find out at the end of their investigation it is obvious that the murders are somehow linked to the freshly revived peace progress."
"While both the Turkish state and Kurdish movement avoided statements and direct accusations, which would derail the fragile peace process, their timid rhetoric and positioning on the slayings implied quite the opposite and pointed at an implicit blame game on the other," the article reads.
"Furthermore, the killings have also not been considered in the context of Turkey’s regional dilemmas with fingers pointing at the country’s neighbors, which are said not to be content with Ankara’s peace efforts with the jailed PKK leader. Accused for a long time of using the PKK as a “tool in the proxy war” with Turkey, the first culprit was seen as Syria, which has been seeing Turkey as host to rebels fighting against the regime. Then the turn was handed over to another regional country fighting against a PKK-linked militant group, Iran, which is alleged to be anxious over Turkey’s efforts," the author writes.
"For the PKK’s part, it is not an unknown fact that the group capitalized on and is being capitalized on by the regional rivalries and even hostilities. That being said, it would not only be a pity but also deceptive for all sides if the hardly mobilized push for peace will be allowed to fall victim to the recent events, excluding the human tragedy behind it."
