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Turkey: Pro-Kurdish leader vows loyalty to
Turkey's unity
3.9.2007 |
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September 3, 2007
ISTANBUL, Turkey,-- A pro-Kurdish leader
whose party is often accused of having ties with
separatist rebels said Monday his party was
committed to solving Turkey's Kurdish question
without challenging the country's unity.
Ahmet Turk, of Democratic Society Party, or DTP,
delivered one of the first speeches by a pro-Kurdish
lawmaker in Parliament in more than a decade. The
party's legislators were ousted from the assembly in
the early 1990s and spent more than a decade in
prison for speaking Kurdish while taking the oath of
office.
Turk and 19 others are the first DTP members to have
entered Parliament since then. The party fielded all
of its candidates as independents in last month's
general elections to get around a 10-percent
threshold required for parties to win representation
on the 550-seat Parliament.
His comments were made during a debate over the
prime minister's policy, outlined last week after
the election of the former foreign minister,
Abdullah Gul, to the presidency. |
The pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP)
deputy Ahmet Turk |
The DTP legislators are seeking more rights for
Turkey's Kurdish minority.
An armed rebel group, Kurdistan Workers' Party, or
PKK, has been fighting the government forces for
autonomy since 1984 in a conflict that has cost tens
of thousands of lives.
The pro-Kurdish party is often criticized by other
parties for failing to brand the PKK a terrorist
organization.
"We are looking for a solution along the lines of
unity and brotherhood, without questioning Turkey's
indivisibility or its unity," Turk said.
Turk criticized the government, however, for failing
to remove restrictions on the freedom of expression,
specifically article 301 of the Turkish penal code
which has been used to prosecute intellectuals
including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk for his
comments on the mass killings of Armenians and
Turkey's Kurdish question.
"There's no concrete step taken to ban articles that
restrain the freedom of expression, including
article 301," Turk said.
"There's no point in talking about other aspects of
democracy as long as there is no tolerance for
different opinions," Turk said.
AP
**
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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