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Turkey's Kurdish party makes plans to
enter parliament
28.2.2007 |
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February 28, 2007
ANKARA, February 28, -- Turkey's main Kurdish
political movement, the Democratic Society Party
(DTP), is determined to enter parliament in general
elections in November despite the high threshold,
its chairman said Wednesday.
"We will definitely have a group in parliament in
the next term," Ahmet Turk said in a speech at a
party convention here, Anatolia news agency
reported.
"We will be aiming for parliament, even if it
requires independent candidates," he said, arguing
that the 10-percent national threshold to enter
parliament had been designed to stop Kurdish parties
from winning seats.
Many Kurds have become legislators in Turkey as
members of mainstream parties, but pro-Kurdish
movements have failed to overcome the 10-percent bar
to enter parliament, even though they usually
dominate the vote in most areas in the mainly
Kurdish southeast and routinely win the local
administrations.
Fielding independent candidates may allow them to
by-pass the barrier in the elections set for
November 4. Once in parliament, the winning deputies
can again regroup under the DTP banner.
Several Kurdish politicians entered parliament in
1991 on the ticket of a center-left party, but they
lost their seats in 1994 after the Kurdish party to
which they moved was outlawed for having links to
armed Kurdish rebels fighting the government.
Four of them, including Leyla Zana, the 1995
laureate of the European Parliament's Sakharov human
rights award, are still standing trial -- for the
third time -- on charges of supporting the rebels.
The four, released in 2004 after a decade in jail,
were expected to be elected to a DTP managing board
at Wednesday's convention, marking a return to
active politics, media reports said.
Kurdish politicians are routinely accused of being
instruments of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),
which has led a bloody separatist insurgency in the
southeast since 1984 and is listed as a terrorist
group by Ankara and much of the international
community.
Ahmet Turk Wednesday renewed an appeal to Ankara for
a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish conflict, which
has claimed more than 37,000 lives, and called for a
general amnesty for PKK militants as a first step
towards a settlement.
The DTP was set up in November 2005 as a successor
of other Kurdish movements, which were outlawed by
the courts.
It has pledged to try to resolve the Kurdish
conflict through peaceful means, but has so far made
no progress.
AFP
** The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate as many as 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to some 20 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan ( Kurdistan-Turkey)
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