By Ece Toksabay
ANKARA (Reuters) -The mothers of some fighters in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) called on Wednesday for an amnesty for their children and an end to decades of death, before a Turkish parliamentary commission overseeing the group’s disarmament.
“We mothers do not want to cry anymore. Let us bury weapons, not our children,” Nezahat Teke, a Kurdish mother speaking in broken Turkish, told lawmakers on behalf of a group called the “Peace Mothers”.
The PKK, which took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984, said in May it would disarm and dissolve and last month several members burned weapons in a symbolic ceremony in mountainous northern Iraq, where it is now based.
The commission, dubbed the National Solidarity, Fraternity and Democracy Commission, aims to set a path towards lasting peace, which would also resonate in neighbouring Syria.
“If we want more weapons to be burned, then those people must be given a chance. If they come down from the mountains only to be sentenced to life in prison, how can we persuade others to burn their weapons?” said Teke, who was wearing a white headscarf, the symbol of the Peace Mothers.
More than 40,000 people have been killed over four decades of conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK, which is deemed a terrorist group by Ankara, the European Union and the United States.
Rebia Kiran, another mother, asked lawmakers to adopt regulations shielding PKK members from lengthy prison sentences. “If you want peace, let them join politics instead of being locked away,” she said.
The calls for amnesty came a day after the commission heard some Turkish veterans and families of other victims call for PKK members to face legal accountability as part of the peace process.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Alex Richardson)
