Editor's note.

• Author: Dagi, Ihsan
• Position: Peace negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers' Party

ON MARCH 21, almost one million Kurds gathered in Diyarbakir to celebrate the Kurdish New Year, Newroz and listened to the message of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed PKK. In the midst of the cheers and applauses, Ocalan declared that the era of armed struggle for the Kurds ended and the PKK would lay down its arms.

This was a historic public demonstration of a new peace process conducted by the Turkish government on the one side and Abdullah Ocalan on the other to reach a negotiated settlement for the Kurdish insurgency.

After the failure of earlier attempts followed by months of violence and political tension, the new process was a surprise but a most welcome one. Caution is in store but hopes are high. Many regard the prospect for a solution to the Kurdish problem as a historic opportunity for Turkey to build peace among its citizens, consolidate its democracy, and finally remove a significant obstacle to its full strength in the conduct of its regional and global policy.

The government's priority is to secure withdrawal of the PKK militants out of Turkey and their eventual disarmament. This means, first, a ceasefire, and then disarming the PKK. But, there are also the demands and expectations of Ocalan and the PKK to take into consideration. As Ana Villellas from the Autonomous University of Barcelona reflects in her commentary "any peace negotiation involves some kind of deal where everyone is supposed to gain in some way. It would thus be naive to expect withdrawal and eventual disarmament without security guarantees or progress with regard to Kurdish demands."

The question is to find a formula that will satisfy the Kurds and be acceptable to the Turks. Not an impossible task, neither an easy one. As Gune? Murat Tezcur of Loyola University warns, "if the government does not act now, Kurdish nationalism would become less containable."

The prevailing mood in the country is that the current process provides a window of opportunity and that Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Ocalan can find a solution to the problem.

Will this new process succeed?

In his contribution to this issue of Insight Turkey Yilmaz Ensaroglu, the head of the Southeast subgroup of the 63-member Wise Men Commission reminds us "the peace process is at its earliest and easiest stage."

We still do not know much on how the withdrawal, disarmament, and legal arrangements will be conducted. Methods for conflict resolution and peace building developed in...