Turkey Feature: PKK Leader Ocalan, Moving Towards Peace, Calls on Fighters to Leave Country (Hurriyet)

PM Erdogan & PKK head Ocalan

Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan has called on armed militants to leave Turkish soil in a historic message read out by the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) deputy Pervin Buldan and Sırrı Süreyya Önder in Kurdish and Turkish.

“We are at a point today that guns will be silenced and thoughts will speak. It is time for armed elements to move outside [Turkey’s] borders. This is not an ending but a new beginning,”

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Turkey Live Coverage (9 July): The Syria and Kurdistan Situations

1700 GMT: Although one-fourth of the text required for a new constitution is drafted by the Parliament’s Constitutional Reconciliation Commission; BDP's Sirri Sureyya Onder, a member of the same commission, criticized the way articles are drafted:

Every article is started with 'national security', 'public order' or 'public morality'. We are weary of this! They are interspersing [these concepts] like a fertiliser. A constitution cannot be made like this!

1640 GMT: Turkish jets have been heading towards the northern Iraqi region from the districts of Semdinli and Cukurca of the southeastern province of Hakkari.

1545 GMT: Following the third judicial reform package, which was passed by Parliament last week, President Abdullah Gul spoke about the situation of jailed deputies:

Now courts will interpret the [newly] adopted laws. They will make their decisions [whether to release jailed deputies] in the light of the information and laws they hold in their hands.

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