Kurdish demonstrators have blocked a highway in southeast Turkey and seized a soldier, exposing the fragility of a peace process which Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan launched with PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 2012 to try to end a three-decade insurgency which has killed 40,000 people, a move long unthinkable in the face of strong nationalist opposition. “You have stuck up for the peace process. I believe you will not allow the process to be sabotaged,” Erdogan told thousands of his AK Party supporters in the eastern and predominantly Kurdish province of Agri, near the Iranian border, on 28 May.
Erdogan has staked considerable political capital in peace efforts, widening cultural and language rights at the risk of alienating parts of his grassroots support base. The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and European Union and Ocalan remains widely reviled among Turks.