Tag: BDP

Assad ‘eyes sectarian, ethnic fight’ in Turkey

over new constitution BDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş (L) speaks to Serkan Demirtaş (C) and Göksal Bozkurt of the Hürriyet Daily News. DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SÖNMEZ

GÖKSEL BOZKURT / SERKAN DERMİRTAŞ

ANKARA – Hürriyet Daily News

Selahattin Demirtaş, BDP co-chair, says he warned President Gül and Foreign Minister Davutoğlu against a spillover from Syria

Syria is looking to stir up ethnic and sectarian unrest in Turkey, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş has warned, urging Ankara to reconcile with Turkey’s Kurdish population or face the risk of plunging deeper into conflict.

“Syria is about to explode. The unrest is continuing. The threats of [President Bashar] al-Assad’s regime to Turkey should not be underestimated. He has given a message: ‘We have religious and ethnic differences, so does Turkey. If we have domestic disturbances, then so will Turkey,’” Demirtaş said in an interview with the Hürriyet Daily News on Oct. 13.

To prevent a spill-over effect in Turkey from turmoil in the Middle East, the government and the Kurds must immediately reconcile, said Demirtaş, whose party is mainly focused on the Kurdish issue.

The BDP leader said he had shared his concerns with both President Abdullah Gül and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. “I told them they have no time to lose, but they are making the problem worse with their complacency and lethargy. Ground operations, KCK operations, the isolation of [outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan at] İmrali is an eclipse of reason. This is the time for dialogue and negotiations. I don’t think the upcoming days will be this comfortable.”

Police have launched a number of raids to detain people accused of membership in the Kurdistan Communities’ Union (KCK), which is accused of being the urban wing of the PKK. The latter is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

“If someone ignites a clash between Arabs and Kurds in Syria, the powers behind it will want to spread the unrest to Turkey. I don’t know if it will be an ethnic or sectarian conflict. I cannot say how it will happen, but they will try. We already have wounds, and they will try to rub salt in them,” the BDP leader said.

Ratcheting up tensions

Commenting on the recent assassination of Syrian Kurdish leader Meshaal Tamo, Demirtaş said the Kurds had not been involved in domestic insurrection, or revolted against al-Assad, and were balanced in their politics. He added that he was not directly in contact with Syrian Kurds and received information indirectly.

“They might be trying to incite the Kurdish people with such assassinations. This could turn into a Kurdish-Arab, Sunni-Shiite conflict. Maybe that’s what they’re planning,” Demirtaş said. “The whole thing is heading toward a dangerous point.”

The Turkish government has overstretched itself to the point of interfering with Syria, said Demirtaş, urging the ruling party to provide an explanation as to what the Turkish and Kurdish people should expect for the future of the region.

“In such a period, the Justice and Development Party [AKP] and the Republican People’s Party [CHP] need to think about the next 100 years of the country,” Demirtaş said, also noting the threat posed by Iran to Turkey’s domestic stability.

New constitution

The BDP places great importance on the new constitution and will actively participate in its preparation, said Demirtaş.

“The constitution cannot be made only by 12 deputies from four parties,” said Demirtaş, proposing the establishment of another commission that will bring together representatives of women’s, environmental and human rights organizations and minority communities. The new constitution must be approved by the public in a referendum no matter how many deputies approve it in Parliament, he added.

“The constitutional commission must also solve the issue of jailed deputies,” the BDP leader said. “They can’t say it is not their job. If you’re making a new constitution, you also need to clear the path of mines. Eight deputies are behind bars, and Parliament cannot vote on the Constitution without them.”

Demirtaş said Ankara was looking to South Africa and the dissolution of the Apartheid regime for inspiration to solve problems, adding that for this to work, the government had to end clashes with the PKK because “the new constitution cannot be prepared without peace. The commission can’t work while funerals take place every day.”

Both the PKK and the government have the will to restart negotiations, said Demirtaş. For this to happen, Öcalan’s “terms must be met. The government must give this man, who has the power to bring the PKK militants down from the mountains, his freedom. Only Öcalan has the power to do this.”

Demirtaş also called on the government to reveal the content of the protocols drafted between the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and the PKK. “Those protocols contain the PKK’s disarmament. From what we understand, it is reasonable. Turkey could get rid of this problem for good. But the government’s approach has not been serious.”

via Assad ‘eyes sectarian, ethnic fight’ in Turkey – Hurriyet Daily News.

October 15, 2011
Erdogan plays Palestinian saviour, but what about the Kurds?

Turkey’s prime minister is championing Abbas’s UN appeal – yet still has to resolve the Kurdish issue back home

Simon Tisdall · 21/09/2011 · guardian.co.uk

A Kurdish demonstration in Istanbul this month, calling for the release of the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Photograph: Tolga Bozoglu/EPA

Turkey’s noisy championing of Palestinian rights, a source of growing friction with the US and Israel, jars uncomfortably with Ankara’s treatment of its own disadvantaged and stateless minority – the Kurds. Bomb attacks this week in Ankara, blamed on Kurdish PKK militants, highlight the deteriorating internal security situation and stoke fears that Turkey’s troubles could spill over into Syria and Iraq, further aggravating Arab spring instability.

Apparently oblivious to possible double standards, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, has been in voluble form of late. His tour last week of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia played upon a common theme – Turkey’s support for the justified aspirations of oppressed peoples everywhere. Erdogan’s long-running feud with Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians reached new heights when he warned the Turkish navy might escort future relief flotillas to Gaza.

Alarmed at the implications for US interests, Barack Obama took time at the UN in New York on Tuesday to talk Erdogan down, stressing their shared interest in peaceful, negotiated outcomes in Palestine, Syria and elsewhere. Turkey is a leading backer of President Mahmoud Abbas’s bid for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood. Obama, flanked by Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, desperately hopes to shove this uncomfortable issue back in the freezer.

The US also wants to head off renewed ground incursions targeting PKK bases in Iraq, as threatened last week by a senior Turkish minister, given obvious security concerns surrounding the US troop withdrawal. Rising tensions over disputed gas fields off Cyprus are adding to Washington’s worries at a time when, to put it mildly, the Greek government and its Greek Cypriot allies are not in the best shape.

Unfortunately for the majority of Turkey’s Kurds who want a peaceful settlement, one consequence of resulting American appeasement of Ankara is likely to be ever closer US co-operation with Turkey’s escalating military operations against the PKK. Like the EU, the US lists the PKK as a terrorist organisation, a categorisation passionately disputed by the main Kurdish national party, the BDP, which describes it as a “resistance” group. Washington already provides military satellite intelligence to Ankara. Now there is renewed talk of a Turkish base for US Predator drones, which the Turks want to target the PKK inside Iraq.

Erdogan has made important efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue, notably via the so-called “democratic opening” that included talks with the jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan. For their part, the PKK and Kurdish political parties have renounced their former separatist agenda. But gains have been limited, hardliners on both sides have obstructed the process, and Erdogan’s attention has shifted to the wider stage of Arab emancipation and the “re-Ottomanisation”, as some call it, of the Middle East. For him, it seems, the role of grand regional rainmaker is more alluring than that of down-home, hard-slog peacemaker.

The Kurdish parties are still trying to get his attention. The BDP’s woefully under-reported congress in Ankara earlier this month produced an eight-point protocol or “road map” for what it called a democratic resolution; and it proposed resumed talks as a matter of urgency. “All identities, cultures, languages and religions must be protected by the constitution. As a basic principle there must be a constitutional nationality that is not founded on ethnicity,” it said.

“The right to speak in the mother tongue – including in public – must be universally protected by the constitution. Education in the mother tongue language must be recognised as a fundamental right … There must be a transition to a decentralised administration. With regards to autonomy, local, provincial and regional councils must have more powers,” a BDP summary of the protocol said.

This is hardly an earth-shaking or revolutionary agenda. It is a far cry from the forfeited dream of an independent state spanning south-east Turkey, north-western Iran and parts of Syria and Iraq. And as the International Crisis Group notes in a report published this week, the acceptance of universal rights should not be regarded as a concession by the Turkish government.

The ICG report argues persuasively that the basis for a negotiated, peaceful settlement remains in place despite an upsurge in violence since June’s elections that has claimed more than 100 lives. “The PKK must immediately end its new wave of terrorist and insurgent attacks, and the Turkish authorities must control the escalation with the aim to halt all violence. A hot war and militaristic tactics did not solve the Kurdish problem in the 1990s and will not now,” the ICG says.

It continues: “The Turkish Kurd nationalist movement must firmly commit to a legal, non-violent struggle within Turkey, and its elected representatives must take up their seats in parliament, the only place to shape the country-wide reforms that can give Turkish Kurds long-denied universal rights. The Turkish authorities must implement radical judicial, social and political measures that persuade all Turkish Kurds they are fully respected citizens.”

Surely this is not so hard to do? It’s time Erdogan stopped playing Palestinian saviour and put Turkey’s problems first.

October 7, 2011
French-Armenian Citizen Detained in Diyarbakir, Turkey

Epress.am — A French citizen of Armenian descent was taken under police custody during the Mesopotamia Social Forum which took place from Sept. 21–25 in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir. News of his being detained was disseminated only today, when Tigran Yegavian returned to France and contacted the French Consulate in Istanbul to investigate the issue.

Ahead of the forum, police stopped and searched Yegavian, along with others. After they found phone numbers of MPs of Turkey’s main Kurdish party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), in his possession, police called him in to be questioned about his meetings with members of Turkey’s Kurdish community, because they, according to police officials, are tied to “the acts of terrorism supported by the European community.”

Yegavian, according to the Epress.am correspondent in Istanbul, is a member of a very important Armenian foundation in France. He had travelled to Turkey to conduct studies on Armenians and had meetings with some public figures in order to write articles, as well as to support dialogue among Armenian, Turkish and Kurdish peoples.

Note, on Sept. 20 members of the French branch of Yerkir Union (Yerkir Europe) met with Diyarbakir mayor Osman Baydemir of Kurdish descent to discuss possible joint intercultural programs between the civil societies of Armenia, Turkey and the Armenian diaspora, which, most likely, was the reason Turkish authorities called forum participants in for questioning.

Updated on 6 pm, same day: “Two French-Armenian citizens” changed to one French-Armenian citizen and his name, Tigran Yegavian, added.

via ArmeniaDiaspora.com – News from Armenia, Events in Armenia, Travel and Entertainment | French-Armenian Citizen Detained in Diyarbakir, Turkey (updated).

October 6, 2011
Turkish parliament approves cross-border raids

By Ivan Watson and Yesim Comert, CNN

October 6, 2011 — Updated 0246 GMT (1046 HKT)

Kurdish women hold portraits of their missing sons on May 18, 2011 during a demonstration in Istanbul.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The vote comes after the arrest of hundreds of suspected PKK members

One analyst says the PKK cannot be defeated militarily

Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey

Istanbul (CNN) — Turkish lawmakers Wednesday voted to extend authorization for the Turkish military to carry out cross border attacks against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

The vote authorizes cross-border military operations for another year. Its passage came a day after Turkish police arrested more than 100 people across the country, suspected of links to rebels with the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

Lawmakers from the main Kurdish nationalist party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), denounced the arrests.

In a phone call with CNN, deputy BDP chair Meral Danis Bestas claimed her party was the true target of the arrests.

“Almost 90% of the people detained are from the BDP, members of the party administration or executive council or mayors,” Bestas said.

She also criticized the parliamentary vote on cross-border raids, calling it a “big mistake.”

“It would have been so much better if the first task of the parliament was one that contributed to peace and elimination of obstacles in the way of democracy, rights and freedoms,” Bestas said.

The Kurds represent the largest ethnic minority in Turkey. For decades, they were the target of repressive government policies, implemented by officials who sometimes referred to them as “mountain Turks.” Until just a few years ago, it was illegal to speak Kurdish on radio and television in Turkey. The government of prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tried to improve relations by launching a state Kurdish language TV station in 2009.

Some observers are sounding the alarm about the escalating tensions between Turkey and its ethnic Kurdish minority, warning it may re-ignite a conflict that has simmered since 1984 and claimed more than 30,000 lives.

“A new destructive cycle of violence between the Turkish authorities and Turkish Kurd nationalists has begun,” warned the Brussels-based mediation organization the International Crisis Group in a recent report.

“Soldiers, police and insurgents are being killed in escalating clashes and bombings, demonstrations are being dealt with by excessive tear gas and force, more than 3,000 political activists are in jail for the peaceful expression of their views, and the misuse of the anti-terror law and other restrictive legislation keeps political tension high,” the ICG report said.

Last month, at least three people were killed by an explosion in the heart of the Turkish capital, Ankara. A Kurdish rebel splinter group later claimed responsibility for the attack.

Throughout the summer, dozens of soldiers and police were killed by rebel ambushes across southeastern Turkey. In August, the Turkish military retaliated, carrying out aerial sorties bombing rebel camps in northern Iraq.

Meanwhile, there has been an increase in violent clashes between Kurdish activists and Turkish police in other cities and towns in western Turkey, far away from the PKK’s traditional area of operation in the predominantely Kurdish, southeastern part of the country.

“The PKK cannot be defeated militarily,” said Hugh Pope, the International Crisis Group’s senior Turkey analyst, in an interview with CNN. “This has been tried over and over again in the past 30 years… the PKK can find too much money, too many arms, they have the support of millions of people at least in sympathy. The application of military force, if it goes too far, will only drive more support into the arms of the PKK.”

But some Turkish analysts think the Turkish government stands a new chance of defeating the Kurdish separatists, now that Erdogan has succeeded in imposing civilian control over the armed forces.

“It’s a paradigm shift,” said Lale Kemal, a military analyst and Ankara bureau chief of the Turkish newspaper Taraf. “We should bear in mind the fact that this is the first time in Turkish history since the outbreak of the PKK war that a civilian government is acting like a real actor in ruling the nation.”

via Turkish parliament approves cross-border raids – CNN.com.

October 6, 2011
Preparing for Peace in Turkey

The Erdogan government must not let the escalating insurgency distract it from addressing Kurdish civilians’ underlying problems.

By HUGH POPE

Turkey’s activism throughout the Arab Spring and its showy challenges to Israel have gotten Ankara plenty of international attention in the last several months. But closer to home, a disturbing trend is emerging. Since June, at least 150 people have been killed and hundreds injured in an escalation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) long-running insurgency.

It’s nothing like the worst days of the conflict in the 1990s—not yet, at least. But the downward spiral already includes familiar kidnappings, tit-for-tat clashes between the PKK and Turkish forces, terrorist bombings, Turkish attacks on PKK bases across the Iraqi border, mass detentions of Turkish Kurds and flashes of ethnic strife between Turkish and Kurdish civilians in major cities.

The escalation is even more significant given that Turks and Kurds have come closer than ever to peace over the past two years. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been reluctant to spend enough of his enormous domestic political capital to tackle some of the underlying problems of his 15% Kurdish community. He has allowed a hardening of Turkish anti-terror laws, which have put 3,000 Kurd activists behind bars—not for any violent acts, but because they happen to share the nationalist goals of the PKK. He has not relaxed the ban on Kurds learning their mother tongue at primary and secondary school. Just as importantly, Mr. Erdogan has only briefly attempted to reeducate the Turkish-majority public, whose views have been distorted by a near-century of nationalist education and, in the past, anti-Kurd propaganda.

Mr. Erdogan has taken a more nationalist line since campaigning for the June elections, but he needs to find a way back to the pragmatic negotiating position he adopted after his Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power in 2001. In 2005-09, he developed a strategy that became known as the Democratic Opening. This ended torture in jails, gradually liberalized Kurdish-language broadcasting and higher education, and spread a new sense of normalcy and development to the impoverished, refugee-flooded cities in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast.

Not surprisingly, the whole country has benefited. Although these reforms were only steps on the road to fully recognizing Kurds’ civil rights, Mr. Erdogan and the AKP have arguably done more for Turkey’s Kurds than any previous government. Thanks to this, AKP consistently wins half of ethnic Kurds’ votes.

AFP/Getty ImagesAnkara must not let renewed violence distract from addressing Kurdish civilians’ underlying problems.

In parallel, Mr. Erdogan allowed state representatives to negotiate secretly with the PKK. Meeting in Turkey, Europe and northern Iraq, they appeared to have reached agreement on essential parts of an eventual peace deal—including an end to the fighting, a gradual amnesty for insurgents, and perhaps better conditions for jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. A major step occurred in October 2009, when the government allowed eight PKK fighters and 26 PKK sympathizers, who had been living in a refugee camp in Iraq, back into Turkey.

But sadly, Mr. Erdogan and the AKP did not ready the Turkish public for the gesture. Instead of the quiet rapprochement the government had envisioned, tens of thousands of Turkish Kurds poured down to the Iraqi border two years ago, overjoyed at the prospect of an end to the conflict that had blighted their lives for generations. Turkish Kurd politicians overplayed their hand, feting the returning insurgents, who were wearing their distinctive guerrilla outfits. The scenes were broadcast nationwide and outraged an unprepared western Turkish opinion, which did not see Kurdish joy at the possibility of peace, but instead saw only celebrations at their own expense. Mr. Erdogan, meanwhile, saw his polls slipping among Turks and instead of standing fast and seizing control of the story, he dropped the initiative.

Tensions again shot up this year after June’s national elections, when one of the 36 parliamentary deputies from Turkey’s main legal Kurdish nationalist party (Peace and Democracy, or BDP) was stripped of his seat for a last-minute conviction under Turkey’s catch-all antiterror laws. Five other newly elected BDP deputies, detained on similar charges, have been kept in jail since June. Amid Kurds’ protests, BDP deputies boycotted parliamentary sessions over the summer and only returned to chambers this week. Less visibly, the secretive peace negotiations between the Turkish authorities and the PKK have broken down.

The PKK has clearly been the prime mover in the recently escalating violence, perhaps seeking to impress the Turkish authorities with its disruptive abilities and probably also trying to polarize sentiment to win back influence over Turkish Kurds. But the bloodshed is not helping. New pleas for an end to the fighting from Turkish Kurd civil society show that the vast majority of Kurds do not want to split off from Turkey but want to continue to live and prosper there. And the toll of 79 dead Turkish security forces since June underlines that any government attempt at a military solution will be costly and likely as fruitless as that of the 1990s.

BDP’s decision to return to parliament is thus a critical opportunity for the AKP government and Turkish Kurds to find new ways to end the chronic conflict. It goes without saying that the PKK, the armed and dominant wing of the Turkish Kurd nationalist movement, must end its latest wave of terror attacks and commit to legal means of pursuing full rights for Turkish Kurds. Prime Minister Erdogan and the AKP will also have to consider why their recent attempts failed to lessen the mistrust between Turks and Turkish Kurds.

The Turkish authorities must not fall into the PKK’s trap and let the ongoing fighting distract them from pursuing a new constitution, legal system and education curriculum cleansed of ethnic discrimination. They should also change laws that have detained thousands of Turkish Kurds for what they think and not what they do, and engage the BDP far more.

To make this all work, Mr. Erdogan will have to use his domestic support to both convince Turkish Kurds of his sincerity and to persuade Turks that equal rights for all ethnicities will strengthen Turkey, not destroy it. Such an effort will take time and consistency, and may prove initially expensive in the polls. But there could be no bigger achievement than ending a conflict that has killed 30,000 people and, by Mr. Erdogan’s own estimate, cost $300 billion since 1984. Forging a lasting peace with Kurds would truly yield a “Turkish model” of democracy worth emulating elsewhere in the region.

Mr. Pope is the International Crisis Group’s Turkey-Cyprus project director and author of “Turkey Unveiled: a History of Modern Turkey” (Overlook, 3rd ed., 2011).

October 4, 2011
End of Kurdish MPs’ boycott raises hopes for new constitution in Turkey

End of Kurdish MPs’ boycott raises hopes for new constitution in Turkey

Thomas Seibert

The newly elected MPs of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party and its chairman, Selahattin Demirtas, (foreground) seen arriving outside the parliamentary building in Ankara as they ended a four-month boycott of the Turkish parliament. ADEM ALTAN / AFP PHOTO

ISTANBUL // The decision by Turkey’s main Kurdish party to end a parliamentary boycott has boosted hopes for a political consensus on a new constitution that could help solve the Kurdish question.

But as Kurdish deputies took their oaths of office during Saturday’s first session of parliament after the summer break, and government and opposition promised to support all-party talks about a new constitution, continuing violence in the Kurdish region served as a reminder of how difficult the road to peace is likely to be.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, said last week that he hoped for an agreement on a constitution within the first six months of the coming year.

On Saturday, he added that he was prepared to have Turkey’s intelligence service take up new negotiations with Kurdish rebels, sworn enemies of Ankara.

There is broad agreement among politicians, non-governmental groups and academics that Turkey, a rising regional power and an EU candidate country, needs to replace its constitution, which was written under military rule in 1982 and includes many regulations restricting democracy.

But opinions about how the new one should look differ widely.

Mr Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which raked in almost 50 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections in June, has started preliminary talks with two opposition parties, the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), about the shape of negotiations on the constitution.

The parties agreed to set up a special committee for work on the new basic law.

In a step widely seen as reaching out to the Kurds, the prime minister said the AKP would seek talks in the coming days with the Party for a Democratic Society (BDP), the main Kurdish party.

The BDP won about 30 seats in June but refused to send its deputies to parliament, in protest against the imprisonment of a colleague.

The party decided last week to end the boycott so it would not be left out of the constitutional talks.

The BDP parliamentary group established after the oath-taking on Saturday includes Leyla Zana, a legendary Kurdish politician who spent 10 years in prison after speaking Kurdish during her first oath-taking in parliament in 1991, and Erol Dora, Turkey’s first Christian deputy since the 1960s.

But for all the symbolism and the hope for a speedy agreement on a new basic law, politicians and analysts alike warn that negotiations will not be easy.

Selahattin Demirtas, the BDP leader, said after a meeting with Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s president: “We have entered a tough new phase.”

Turkish courts have jailed numerous BDP members for suspected links to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a rebel group that has been fighting against the Turkish state since 1984.

Just as politicians in Ankara get ready to tackle the question of whether to enshrine cultural rights of minority groups like Turkey’s estimated 12 million Kurds in the new constitution, the PKK has stepped up its violent campaign in the Kurdish region.

While increasing attacks on outposts of the military and the police, PKK fighters have also started to target civilians.

Twelve teachers, seen by the PKK as representatives of a system that suppresses Kurdish language rights, have been kidnapped by rebels in recent days.

Two weeks ago, four female civilians were killed in a PKK attack in the province of Siirt. The rebels later apologised for the deaths.

Last week, a pregnant woman and her 4-year-old daughter were killed in another shoot-out between PKK members and the police in Batman.

Police say the woman and the girl were shot by PKK members but pro-Kurdish media say police bullets killed them.

As a response to the increase in attacks by the PKK which started in August, Mr Erdogan has ordered airstrikes on rebel camps in northern Iraq.

The government is also asking parliament to extend a mandate for cross-order operations of the armed forces, which would enable Ankara to strike at the PKK in Iraq with an intervention by ground forces.

Mithat Sancar, a law professor at Ankara University, said: “There is a logic of war on both sides.” But while the state was trying to weaken the PKK militarily to force it to accept a solution, the rebels were convinced the state would solve the Kurdish question only under pressure of violence, he said “It is a vicious circle,” Mr Sancar said.

The violence had the potential to derail the political process that was about to begin with the constitutional negotiations, he said.

However, Mr Sancar said, there were also signs of hope, such as the BDP’s return to parliament and Mr Erdogan’s willingness to talk to the Kurdish party.

“This demonstrates that both sides are expecting something from a peaceful process,” Mr Sancar said.

“Both sides are aware that violence is a dead-end street.”

[email protected]

via End of Kurdish MPs’ boycott raises hopes for new constitution in Turkey – The National.

October 3, 2011