In an interview with Reuters about the negotiation process between the Turkish state and Kurdish people's leader Abdullah Öcalan, KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union) Executive Council Co-President Cemil Bayık said that the process has come to an end.

"Either they accept deep and meaningful negotiations with the Kurdish movement, or there will be a civil war in Turkey", Bayık said and stressed that Turkey must improve the conditions in which Kurdish leader Öcalan is being held and deal with him on equal terms, guarantee amendments to the constitution and enlist a third party to oversee any further steps in the process.

Now we are preparing ourselves to send the withdrawn groups back to North Kurdistan if the government does not accept our conditions," said Bayık and added that the direction of the process would become clear in the coming days.

Referring to the so-called democratisation package Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has recently unveiled, Bayık said that the package had nothing to do with democracy, and accused Erdogan of giving false hope. "There is no change in the mentality" , he underlined.

KCK executive noted that the government stopped short of constitutional guarantees for Kurdish identity and culture, greater autonomy and native-language education, and did not touch anti-terror laws that have put thousands of political prisoners behind bars.

"We silenced our weapons so that politics could speak, but now we see that politics is in prison", he remarked.

Bayık said the Kurdish side had abided by the ceasefire, remarking that Turkey had however simply moved the frontline in its fight against Kurds to Syria, where civil war has raged for more than two years.

"At a time when the Turkish government is helping the bandit groups and is waging a war on the people of West Kurdistan, it is the right of the Kurdish people to bring the fight to Turkey," Bayık said, referring to the recent developments in West Kurdistan, Rojava.

Asked whether the PKK had sent guerillas to reinforce the ranks of fellow Kurds in Syria, or would consider doing so in future, Bayık said they did not need help.

"We don't want to send them to West Kurdistan," he said. "If the Turkish government wants to insist on fighting, North Kurdistan is the field of war".

Bayık noted that some Kurds from Syria who had previously fought with the PKK in Turkey had returned home of their own volition, and that young Kurds in Turkey increasingly felt compelled to go to Syria and fight there.

Bayık said in principle the PKK had nothing against Iraqi Kurdistan developing good relations with Ankara, as long as they were based on "equality, freedom and democracy".

"Relations based on oil and gas and economy: we don't find such relations right, and they don't serve a solution to the Kurdish question," he said.

"Turkey used to fight with South Kurdistan on the field, but now they want to win the war from inside the castle", KCK executive added.