The remarks were an appeal to both the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the PKK in the wake of its horrendous tragedy. Türk's party, which enjoys the same grassroots support as the PKK, has so far failed to recognize the PKK as a terrorist organization despite mounting pressure. Hence, his latest message was seen as an important turning point for the DTP in calling on the PKK to stop the violence, but it fell short of being convincing considering the fact that PKK's acts of violence continue. Regarding Türk's latest message, Bugün's Gülay Göktürk says the important thing in demanding peace is not defending it on an abstract level but thinking realistically as to how peace could be maintained. “I have never met someone who does not defend peace conceptually. Who would come up and say, ‘Let people continue to kill each other, and let the massacres go on',” she asks, emphasizing the importance of taking concrete steps to ensure peace. In Göktürk's view, while Türk is calling on everyone who demands peace to take their fingers off the trigger, he has to keep in mind that it cannot be possible for the security forces of a country to take their fingers off the trigger when members of an illegal organization are active in the mountains of this country. “The security forces cannot say, ‘Let them continue to stay in the mountains, let them continue to blackmail and threaten us with weapons in their hands and we will sit down and wait for peace.' If the security forces say this, they will not have fulfilled their duty and will have denied their raison d'être, especially if those gunmen continue to massacre our soldiers each and every day while talking about peace,” explains Göktürk. In such an environment, asking both the TSK and the PKK to “take their fingers off the trigger,” expecting the TSK to stop its operations against the PKK without the PKK ending its violent acts and calling for it to do so means that all calls for peace will remain up in the air.
Radikal's Cengiz Çandar, who considers Türk's latest message in the wake of the soldiers' deaths last week a positive sign, says it would be wrong to ignore this courageous move. He says it is possible to conclude From Türk's message and his call for the PKK to end its violence that the DTP has begun to gain an identity independent of the PKK and the pro-peace PKK line has begun to gain power among the supporters of the PKK. He complains that the DTP has been associated with the PKK up until now and has not done much to make a distinction between itself and the PKK. Hence, he thinks it is important to open the way for the DTP to have a meaningful role in the settlement of Turkey's Kurdish problem.
