Can Turkey learn anything from Northern Ireland?

Recently a group of politicians and commentators from Turkey visited Northern Ireland to learn about its peace process and explore any lessons this might hold for the ongoing fragile negotiations between the Turkish government and the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan. The visitors met with former rebels-turned-politicians from Sinn Féin as well as senior British and Irish political figures, in a trip that was endorsed by the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayip Erdogan. But not all politicians in Turkey were happy with the direction of the peace negotiations – the leader of the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kermal Kılıçdaroğlu, has claimed in the past that Britain’s actions in Northern Ireland were of a fundamentally different nature and cannot serve as a model for Turkey. Today, he is more supportive of entering negotiations with Öcalan, but he is critical of the government for entering negotiations without working through cross-party parliamentary structures. Therefore, it is prescient to ask if the Northern Irish model has any lessons for Turkish officials to achieve peace?