Should Ankara talk to the PKK?

ANKARA, Turkey, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- With Turkey launching a military assault against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, officials were divided over whether dialogue was the best solution.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its Kurdish initials PKK, claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in southern Turkey that left several soldiers and civilians dead.

The Turkish Parliament earlier this month sanctioned cross-border military raids into Iraq to take on the Kurdish separatist group.

Jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan launched an insurgent campaign against the Turkish government in the 1980s. The conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead.

Osman Ocalan, the PKK leader's younger brother, was quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying that if Ocalan wanted peace, "no one in the (PKK) organization would reject it."

A move to settle simmering issues with the Kurdish minority was upended in 2009 when a court banned the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party from politics because of alleged ties to the PKK.

Henri Barkey, a Turkey expert at Lehigh University, told the Journal the latest attack may suggest there is a split within the PKK, with "hard-liners" on one side and Ocalan supporters on the other.

Regardless, Cevat Ones, a former intelligence official in the Turkish government, told the newspaper that while it might be "politically risky" for Ankara to reach out to Ocalan, "keeping up the dialogue is the right thing to do."