BDP excluded as reactions grow

ANKARA/KAYSERİ - Hürriyet Daily News

CHP deputies Levent Gök (L), Umut Oran (C) welcomed the AKP delegation headed by AKP deputy chairman Zelkif Kazdal (R) in the CHP headquarters in Ankara for the Ramadan Bayram greetings exchange. DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SÖNMEZ

The political parties exchanged Şeker Bayram holiday greetings yesterday but excluded the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) amid growing reactions against its lawmakers, who warmly embraced and chatted with outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in the southeastern province of Hakkari’s Şemdinli district.

“Embracing these people is a show of not fearing Allah. No one loves them in this country,” said Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç late Sunday. The incident was shameful, Arınç said, adding that the terrorist organization continued its attacks regardless of the bayram.

Over the weekend, video reports showed PKK members and nine BDP deputies, led by the party’s co-chairwoman Gülten Kışanak, chatting and embracing along a highway in Şemdinli. The BDP says the encounter was not planned beforehand.

Arınç said the meeting of the BDP deputies and the PKK militants was like an Eid greeting.
“So to say, their [the BDP lawmakers’] road was blocked. No, it’s not as if it were intercepted. It’s a meeting point. Everybody is happy [in the images], as if police were not martyred yesterday, as if our eight soldiers were not martyred,” Arınç said.

The incident was worse than a bombing, since it was “mocking the people’s feelings, with martyrs’ blood,” he added.

“If you hug armed people and express support, you’re not a politician. You might have votes. But these people sent you to Parliament to deal with politics, not to hug terrorists,” he said.

Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy Mehmet Emin’s brother was killed by the PKK recently, Arınç said, adding that his party’s politicians in the region were having difficulties due to the terrorist threat. AKP politicians were sometimes abducted, their homes and party buildings were bombed, he said.

The BDP deputies’ embraces mean the BDP deceived the Republic of Turkey and they gave up the deception at that moment, Minister of Energy Taner Yıldız told reporters yesterday.

Meanwhile, AKP deputy chairman Salih Kapusuz also slammed the PKK, saying even at th
e age of ignorance people did not fight and passed that period over. They are far away from this tenderness, Kapusuz told reporters yesterday during a bayram greeting with the Great Union Party (BBP).

Recent terror attacks were an issue during the party greetings yesterday. In a visit by an AKP delegation to the Republican People’s Party (CHP) yesterday, main opposition party deputy Umut Oran noted his party’s call for an extraordinary session in Parliament which the ruling AKP had rejected. In another visit of an AKP delegation to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) yesterday, Sadir Durmaz, deputy chairman of the MHP said that the images of the BDP lawmakers hugging the PKK militants displayed the proximity between the two.

“Once we proposed a state of emergency, they reacted to us. But we see that the government may need to take such a measure in the near future,” he added.