Solutions of conflicts

The base and backbone of this movement is its political wing. Its newest offspring is the Democratic Peoples’ Party (HDP – Halkların Demokratik Partisi) that received more than six million (13.12%) votes (80 seats) in the last election. With new elections looming in November and new clashes flaring up between the Turkish government and the PKK, the HDP’s future hangs in the balance as well.

Bakur, a feature-length documentary produced in 2015, was to be screened as part of the non-competing category in the Istanbul Film Festival organized annually by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). However, neither this documentary nor many of the films and documentaries which were to participate in the film festival were able to be screened. The apparent reason was that Bakur: A Guerilla Documentary did not have the registration document required by the Ministry of Culture.1 The fact that the registration document was not demanded until the date of the documentary’s screening caused public indignation and 21 filmmakers whose films were to be screened in the festival withdrew their films from the festival to support the producer and directors of Bakur.2

The so-called “settlement process” which began with PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) leader Abdullah Öcalan’s letter dated Mart 21, 2013 triggered debates in Kurdish organizations other than PKK. Kurdish movements small or big, which are a distant to PKK, initially approached Öcalan’s letter “with a prudent optimism”.

The Turkey Representation of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, the Diyarbakir Institute for Political and Social Research, İsmail Beşikçi Foundation and Open Society Foundation will jointly organize the international conference “From War to Peace, from Conflict to Resolution” in Istanbul on December 13, 2014 and in Diyarbakir on December 14, 2014. 

We regret to inform you that due to current developments in Turkey, “From War to Peace, From Conflict to Resolution” conference series, which would be held in Ankara on the 17th of October and in Diyarbakır on the 19th of October have been postponed until further notice and the new date will be announced at a future date.

We, as Diyarbakir Institute for Political and Social Research and Heinrich Boell Stiftung Foundation, thought it is necessary to organize a meeting, in such a critically important period, to cover the Kurdish issue in its different aspects and to benefit from international experiences. Differences of perception and the feeling of detachment in the Kurdish and Turkish public opinions, roles and responsibilities of the actors, especially the politicians involved in the settlement process, conditions of settlement, termination of the conflicts, methods for negotiation and dialogue and, the role of the media in the settlement process are among the subjects to be elaborated on in the conference on the 7,8 December 2012 in Ankara.