By Burcu Arik
ISTANBUL
More than 50 Turkish experts have launched a campaign on Monday in support of the solution process.
The experts are concerned that this ongoing effort to end conflict with the outlawed PKK has lost momentum after the illegal pro-Kurdish protests that broke out across Turkey in early October.
"We need to see that the solution process does not belong to any side, it belongs to the Turkish nation," said Cengiz Algan, founder of the group at a press conference on Tuesday in Istanbul.
Organized under the name "Drop Everything, Just Consider Peace," the support campaign has brought together 50 well known Turkish journalists, writers and academics.
Algan, a former member of Turkey's Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party, said Turkey is now closer achieving peace than it has ever been.
"We are about to achieve peace through the Solution Process, a campaign that has won the most support from the Turkish nation so far."
"However, there are some groups trying to prevent us from succeeding" said Algan. These groups aim to divert the nation's attention away peace with provocations and riots, he said.
"We have wasted our time, money, children and investments for the sake of an everlasting war" Algan said.
"We will visit the Turkish parliament by the end of this month, We want to bring all the sides together to make sure the process continues."
"The solution process has created a perfect atmosphere," agrees Nagehan Alci, journalist and columnist in Turkish daily Milliyet.
But the process has lost 10 percent of its support due to the violent protest incidents, Alci said, "We should remember that this process belongs to all of us, not to any side, and should not be made a victim of politics."
We are different from the 'Wise Men' group, Algan said, In the four-decade conflict between Ankara and the separatist PKK movement, Kurdish and Turkish singers, artists and actors, or Wise Men, have voluntarily acted as a channel between the sides, often using their unique status to 'take the temperature' of the Kurdish community.
The illegal pro-Kurdish protests broke out across Turkey under the pretext that the Turkish government was allegedly doing nothing to halt the advance of militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant pouring into the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, just a few kilometers across the Turkish border.
The protests left at least 36 people and two police officers dead along with scores of vehicles, state buildings, party offices and shops damaged.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, U.S., EU and NATO.
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