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Turkey: Kurdish MPs to support Gul in presidency
vote
28.8.2007 |
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August
28, 2007
ANKARA, Turkey, -- The People's Democracy
Party (HDP) will back Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul,
candidate of the ruling Justice and Development
Party (AKP) for Turkey's presidency bid.
The Milliyet newspaper said on its website Monday
that the 20 Kurdish MPs had decided to support Gul
in third round of elections.
Earlier this month, Ahmet Turk,
head of the Kurdish-Democratic Society Party (DTP)
said
"We should never hamper the functioning of the
democratic system," said , after Gul, currently
the foreign minister, visited the party in a bid to
drum up support.
Gul's victory is decided as he needs only a simple
majority that his party owns at the parliament.
A third vote is due tomorrow in which Gul only needs
276 votes, at the time when the AKP has 341 seats at
the parliament out of the total 550 at the
parliament.
According to Milliyet, the Kurdish MPs who did not
vote in the first and second rounds since the ruling
party had not respond to their demands regarding the
"Kurdish issue", had changed their minds in
deference to demands by their electorate.
The paper quoted a Kurdish MP as saying that Gul's
presidency had to be "literary legal" and that real
democracy pushed them to support him in the third
vote.
He added that his party had received telephone calls
from the electorate asking them to vote for Gul.
Milliyet interpreted that sudden change in the
stance of the Kurdish MPs as a positive reaction to
the ruling party's decision to leave the door open
for the Kurdish language in the new civil
constitution.
kuna net.kw
**
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
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 over 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 over 25 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.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
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)
wikipedia
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