Did Erdoğan signal a new dialogue process with the PKK?

Before denouncing the EU as an "alliance of crusaders" that keeps "lying to Turkey" on April 2 in Ankara, President Tayyip Erdoğan was in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır on April 1 as a part of his "Yes" campaign for the April 16 on shifting the country to an executive presidential system. 

At one point he addressed the locals in Kurdish when asking for "Yes, thousands of times," and also slammed the terror created by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), claiming it has links with the network of U.S.-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gülen, accused of masterminding the failed July 15, 2016 coup attempt.

The more-royalist-than-the-king pro-government media reported Erdoğan's words as if he said "We're ready to talk to anyone if they have no gun in their hands," hinting at a new dialogue process with the PKK if the outcome of the April 16 referendum is "Yes."

Perhaps this hint was a result of reports from the local organizations of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) that even among their own grassroots there was an expectation of a resumption of dialogue with the PKK. 

Back in 2012, then-prime minister Erdoğan ordered National Intelligence Organization (MİT) chief Hakan Fidan to carry out talks with the PKK's jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan. Subsequently, during the now-collapsed peace process, MPs of the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) acted as a bridge between Öcalan, the government and the PKK headquarters in the Kandil mountains of Iraq. During that dialogue, a de-conflicting atmosphere prevailed and losses of lives were at a minimum, but the dialogue ultimately collapsed in mid-2015. The PKK resumed its acts of terror and the security forces responded massively; thousands of...