In a statement on the democratisation package the AKP government has announced one week ago, People's Defense Centre (HSM) Commander Murat Karayılan said that the democratic resolution process was currently going through a critical phase and could be facing further challenges in the coming term unless the government changes its attitude and takes some urgent actions.

Karayılan reminded that the Kurdish movement will respond to the package with a declaration to be announced in the coming days.

He pointed out that it was the practices of the government that forced the Kurdish movement to halt the withdrawal from North to South Kurdistan, and called attention to the most recent proposal Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan has presented to ensure the advancement of the process. Karayılan noted that Öcalan's most recent proposal included the transformation of the dialogue process into negotiations and the formation of a new format for the talks between him and the state. Karayılan listed the concept of three proposals  as follows; involvement of an independent monitoring delegation in talks, practice of legal and constitutional arrangements for the solution of the Kurdish issue and improvement of Öcalan's conditions for the advancement of the process. “The process could only make progress should the government take these urgent steps for it would otherwise face a total deadlock for which the Kurdish movement will not be responsible”, he added.

Responding to Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who said that the “democratisation package” was not introduced as a result of a bargain or to answer the demands of someone, Karayılan said “this package is not aimed at the accomplishment but the failure of the solution process. It has revealed the mentality of the government officials who clearly do not recognize Kurds and their fundamental rights. PM Erdoğan spoke for 45 minutes before introducing the package but he made no mention of Kurds during this long speech. This is a mindset we have known for 90 years now”.

Karayılan said they currently had no intention to break the ceasefire, adding that military operations by the Turkish state could however bring the ceasefire process to an end, adding that the Turkish army has launched operations in the Kurdish region in recent days, thus causing a risk of clashes between soldiers and guerrillas. “This is what we said at the very beginning of the ceasefire process, that operations would force us to break the ceasefire”, Karayılan said and added that Kurdish forces would be ready for any probability considering the state's possibility to break the unilateral ceasefire announced by the Kurdish movement.