Peace process with Kurds most important project in history: Turkish PM

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the peace process with Kurds is "one the most important projects of the history of our Republic," Turkish media reported on Saturday.

Emphasizing the essential and irreversible characteristic of the solution process with Kurds, Davutoglu said that "for the sake of the process, we would take every step even tonight if it were necessary," adding that "even a step that would cost me to lose June's elections, I don't hesitate to take."

In a TV interview on Friday night, Davutoglu evaluated the tension in Cizre town of Sirnak province in southeastern Turkey, where clashes between armed groups escalated recently.

A 12-year-old boy was shot dead on Wednesday in the clashes in Cizre near the Syrian border. During the clashes in Cizre, six people have been killed since Oct. 27.

Davutoglu said that somebody tried to expand Syrian and Iraqi bloody events to Turkey, adding that there are a lot of parties targeting to draw Turkey to the chaos of Syria and Iraq, by hampering peace process with Kurds.

"Sometimes one side, sometimes the other side makes provocations to this end," he said.

The outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and other countries, took up arms in 1984 in an attempt to create an ethnic homeland for the Kurds in southeast Turkey.

The Turkish authorities started peace negotiations with the PKK in October 2012, which led to a ceasefire in March 2013, but PKK fighters started to return to their strongholds in northern Iraq in May last year. Endit