The longer the peace process, the more likely the provocations: BDP co-chair

BATMAN – Anatolia News Agency

"We want peace sincerely" said BDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş on Feb.3. DHA photo

The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) has urged the government to accelerate its peace process with the head of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), warning that a slow pace could result in new provocations. 

“We want to see concrete policy changes. We want to see it with our eyes; it is not enough to hear it with our ears. Extending [the process] over a period of time is dangerous. It’s an open invitation for provocations,” BDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş said during a congress of his party in his hometown, the southeastern province of Batman. The BDP is primarily focused on the Kurdish issue.

The peace process initiated at the end of December 2012 between the Turkish government and the jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, has created a sense of optimism that the three-decade-long armed conflict may soon be resolved. The new initiative has earned broad public support from all sides.
  
Acknowledging this wide public support, Demirtaş also vowed to defend the process “until the end” while criticizing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s attitude amid ongoing talks. 

“There is a table in the middle and the prime minister is sitting on both sides of it. So we can not yet call it a negotiation table. However, we see the fact that the table has been set as an important step. We had a lot of difficulties setting it up, it is not a gift. That’s why we will embrace the process,” he said. 

But Demirtaş complained that Öcalan could not receive more regular visits from his lawyers and Kurdish politicians, adding that the second delegation to meet Öcalan at the İmrali prison was ready to depart.

The BDP co-chair also called for the perpetrators behind the Jan. 9 murder of three Kurdish women in Paris, including Sakine Cansız, one of the founders of the PKK, to be brought to light as fast as possible.