PKK Denies Involvement in Istanbul Suicide Attack
The Kurdish Workers Party said it had nothing to do with the bombing in Taksim Square, in central Istanbul, that wounded 32 people yesterday as a suicide bomber that was trying to board a police bus blew himself up. PKK said it extended a unilateral cease-fire until the middle of next year.
The Kurdish party said that as a result of the finger pointing in the Turkish media yesterday after the terrorist act happened.
The Union of Communities in Kurdistan, an organization attached to PKK, said that there is no connection between the attack and the fact that on Sunday was expiring the unilateral four-month cease-fire.
The statement says that on that day when the PKK was ready to extend the cease-fire and find a democratic solution it would have been unconceivable to conduct such an action.
Turkish state newswire Anadolu Ajansi said that the Turkish police has already established that the material used to make the bomb was Austrian in origin, and that the same type was used in previous attacks by radical leftists and by PKK.
However, during his visit to the wounded people, the minister of interior said it was too early to determine the one who did the bombing.
The Union of Communities in Kurdistan accused Turkey’s government for the failure to find a peaceful and democratic solution that would have solved the problems of the largest minority in the country, the Kurds, and would have settled things with the Kurds.
The Union announced that even so the cease-fire will be unilaterally extended until after the elections scheduled to be 
held in June next year.
The statement also sets five conditions that would end the conflict with the Kurds: the end of military operations against the PKK; the release of Kurdish politicians; make possible for Abdullah Ocalan, the historical leader of the Kurds arrested and imprisoned in an island, to participate in the negotiations; to establish constitutional commissions; to lower the threshold for political parties from 10 percent so that they can enter the parliament easier.
It is little hope that these demands will be met, since the government began a trial against 151 members of the union, on the suspicion that they may attempt to establish a parallel state in Turkey.
PKK has been waging a war against the Turks with 40,000 people dead as a result of the conflict on both sides.
The major hit for the Turkish government was scored in February 1999, when they captured Abdullah Ocalan, the most renowned leader of PKK. Since then, the actions of PKK decreased in intensity as the government hinted that any further attacks will harm Ocalan, although clashes with the Turkish government continued.
One fifth of the population of Turkey is of Kurdish origin and is massed to the border with Syria, Iran and Iraq. PKK is listed as a terrorist organization.11
