|
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Aug 12 (AFP) - 11h45 - Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged Friday that
the Kurdish conflict in Turkey would be resolved
with "more democracy" despite a marked increase in
violence by armed Kurdish rebels.
"I want you to know that there will be no going back
from the point Turkey has come to... We will not
allow any regression in the democracy process,"
Erdogan said in an emotional speech in Diyarbakir,
the central city of Turkey's mainly Kurdish
southeast.
"We will resolve all problems with more democracy,
more civil rights and more prosperity," he said.
Erdogan was seeking to allay concerns that a recent
increase of attacks on the army and civilian targets
blamed on the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
might prompt Ankara to introduce measures that would
diminish the fragile freedoms the sizeable Kurdish
minority has only recently gained.
Keen to boost its bid to join the European Union,
Ankara has ended 15 years of emergency rule in the
southeast and allowed the Kurdish language to be
taught at private courses and used in public
television and radio broadcasts.
The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed some
37,000 lives since 1984, when the PKK took up arms
for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast, ravaging the
meager infrastructure and the mainstays of farming
in the region and forcing poor peasants to migrate
en masse into urban slum areas.
The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Turkey,
as well as the United States and the EU, has
markedly stepped up violence over the past several
months after calling off a five-year unilateral
truce in June 2004 that had brought relative peace
to the turbulent southeast.
AFP
Top |
® 