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Turkey's Kurds set up new party
10.11.2005
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ANKARA, Nov 9 (AFP)
- 16h02 - Leading Kurdish activists set up a new
political party in Turkey on Wednesday, pledging to
work to resolve the Kurdish conflict through
peaceful means.
"We will work for peace," Aysel Tugluk, the
co-chairwoman of the Democratic Society Party (DTP),
told AFP shortly before she sumbitted to the
Interior Ministry the documents announcing the
party's formation.
Tugluk is one of the lawyers of jailed Kurdish rebel
leader Abdullah Ocalan, accused by the government of
acting as intermediaries between their client and
his militants in the mountains.
Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party, the Democratic
People's Party (DEHAP), is under the threat of
closure in a pending court case on charges of links
to Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),
blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara as well
as the European Union and the United States.
DEHAP has said it will dissolve itself and merge
with the new party.
The DTP was spearheaded by four former Kurdish
parliament members, including human rights award
winner Leyla Zana, who were released last year after
a decade in jail for collaborating with the PKK in
its armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the
southeast.
"The DTP places importance on resolving the Kurdish
conflict through dialogue," Tugluk was quoted as
saying by Anatolia news agency. "We believe this
problem could be resolved with the institutions and
rules of democracy."
Kurdish politicians in Turkey are traditionally
regarded with suspicion and often seen as
instruments of the PKK.
Some activists have recently called for a new
political movement that will shrug off Ocalan's
influence, known to be notable among Kurdish
activists, in order to win Ankara's confidence and
wage a more efficient struggle for Kurdish rights.
Officials from the EU, which has long advocated the
rights of the Kurdish minority, have also urged
Kurdish politicians to dissociate themselves from
violence.
Some 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when
the PKK launched a bloody separatist campaign,
prompting a heavy-handed response by the Turkish
army.
Keen to boost its EU membership bid, Ankara has
recently granted the Kurds a measure of cultural
freedoms.
AFP
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