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Turkey: Pro-Kurdish DTP condemns excessive
police violence at Newroz
25.3.2008
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DTP MP Akin Birdal holds the Siirt governor and
chief of police responsible for riots at Newroz
celebrations, as well as the Minister of the
Interior and the Prime Minister.
March 25, 2008
Turkey, -- The pro-Kurdish Democratic Society
Party (DTP) is planning to take the issue of
excessive police violence at Newroz celebrations
last weekend to parliament, as well as the fact that
Siirt Police Chief Cuma Ali Aydin refused to shake
hands with Diyarbakir MP Akin Birdal from the DTP.
The DTP demands his dismissal.
The Nevruz/Newroz spring festival has been
appropriated by Kurds in the last decades as a day
of political protest and an expression of their
demands for recognition of a Kurdish identity. |
Akin Birdal, Diyarbakir MP |
Speaking to bianet,
Birdal held the Prime Minister and the Minister of
the Interior responsible for this year’s unrests.
Unrests in Siirt, Van,
Hakkari, Yüksekova...
In the last years, Newroz celebrations in Siirt, in
southeastern Turkey, were peaceful, but this year
Siirt joined Hakkari, Van and Yüksekova, also in the
southeast of Turkey,www.ekurd.net
with unrests. There were
two people killed, one in Van and one in Yüksekova.
There were many more injured, and many taken into
police custody.
In Siirt, five people were injured, two of them
police officers.
The Siirt Chief of Police further refused to shake
hands with Birdal, saying, “I don’t shake hands with
anyone who refuses to call a child murderer (he was
referring to PKK leader Öcalan) a terrorist.”
Cumhur Kiliccioglu, the owner and editor-in-chief of
the Siirt Mücadele newspaper, told bianet that this
year’s events in Siirt filled him with sadness. He
saw the reason for the riots in the refusal for
permission for the celebration date at the weekend.
Prime Minister and Minister of Interior have
failed
According to Birdal, the Minister of the Interior,
Besir Atalay, had promised that he would ensure that
the celebrations/demonstrations would be peaceful,
“but it is clear that his orders were not followed.”
When the Chief of Police refused to shake his hand,
Birdal told him, “that I am a member of parliament,
and that a civil servant entrusted with the security
of the state should not take such an attitude and
talk like that. He said, ‘I am talking as a
citizen.’”
Birdal announced that the DTP would apply to
parliament about the excessive police violence and
the dismissal of the Siirt Police Chief.
He added that the Prime Minister’s explicit refusal
to meet the DTP, despite many requests for
appointments, has affected state officials in
Anatolia. He thus held the Prime Minister and the
Minister of the Interior responsible for the
unrests, too.
This year’s Newroz celebrations were only given
permission for 21 March, which fell on a Friday.
However, the organisers had wanted celebrations on
the weekend, for which permission was not given in
Siirt and some other provinces. Anyone gathering at
the weekend then faced intervention from the police
for “illegal” demonstration.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, bianet
org
** 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 25 million ethnic Kurds, a
large Turkey's Kurdish community 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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