British intelligence played mediator role for Oslo talks

Özgürel recently traveled to the Kandil Mountains in northern Iraq where PKK hideouts are located to conduct an interview with Karayılan.

Speaking to the Taraf daily on Monday, Özgürel said he wanted to interview Karayılan because his prediction about the settlement of the Kurdish problem in 2012 did not come true and the peace process was sabotaged, and as a result he wanted to find out the reasons behind this.

Karayılan told Özgürel that three parties have the minutes of the Oslo talks: the United Kingdom, which mediated the talks, Karayılan and Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT).

The Oslo talks refer to meetings between some senior PKK operatives and MİT officials in order to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish problem.

In September 2011, an almost 50-minute-long voice recording revealed for the first time secret talks between representatives of the Turkish government and members of the PKK in Oslo, possibly held some time in 2010, after Hakan Fidan was appointed the new undersecretary of MİT, replacing Emre Taner.

At the time, the development was interpreted as an attempt to influence Turkish public opinion against the government, which was trying to employ new methods to peacefully resolve the Kurdish question, which has existed since the first years of the Turkish Republic. The situation turned violent in 1984, a few years after the establishment of the PKK. More than 40,000 civilians and security forces have been killed in clashes so far.

Karayılan said in the interview that the ground for the Oslo talks was prepared by the United Kingdom and that they made the recordings but denied having leaked the voice recordings and documents of the Oslo talks.

“It is only me in the PKK who has the copies of the documents of the Oslo talks. Nobody has the copies other than me. I gave the copies to those who wanted to read them and took them back. So, it is impossible for us to leak these documents. These documents did not go to anyone. The BDP [pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party] does not have copies of the documents, either,” Özgürel quoted Karayılan as saying.

According to Karayılan, it is the Turkish police which leaked details of the Oslo talks.

“We first thought whether it could be Israel [who leaked the documents] but then the police said, ‘We found these documents in the drawers of BDP members.’ Since nobody other than me had the copies of the documents, I thought the documents were placed in the drawers of BDP members through the hands of police in Diyarbakır,” Karayılan said.

Karayılan also told Özgürel that the secret talks between the PKK and the Turkish state began within the knowledge of the National Security Council (MGK) and that the operations against the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK) came as a blow to the peace talks.

The investigation into the KCK, which prosecutors say is a group that controls the PKK and other affiliated groups, started in December 2009 and a large number of suspected KCK members, including several mayors from the BDP, have been detained. The suspects are accused of various crimes, including membership in a terrorist organization, aiding and abetting a terrorist organization and attempting to destroy the country’s unity and integrity. BDP officials say the investigation is the government’s way of suppressing BDP politicians, denying any links between the BDP suspects and terrorist organizations.

“When the KCK operations began, we should have realized it [the goal of the operations] because they were a blow to the peace process. We should have understood what we would face and that the peace process would be sabotaged, but we failed to understand this,” Karayılan told Özgürel.