CHP leader still hopeful for solving Kurdish issue

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Kılıçdaroğlu says he can understand MHP’s disfavor for their roadmap and calls on them to give their own proposal on the issue. AA photo

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has extended another olive branch to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) to join the prospective parliamentary commission to find a way to resolve the Kurdish issue.

“I’m still hopeful. I can understand MHP’s disfavor for our roadmap [for the Kurdish issue]. But they can bring their own proposals on the issue. I will accept their proposal. We should bring peace to this country,” Kılıçdaroğlu said yesterday in a live TV show on the state-run TRT.

The CHP’s proposals to establish two commissions, one inside and one outside the Parliament, to discuss solution methods for the decades-old Kurdish issue that has dominated Turkey’s political agenda following last week’s meeting between Kılıçdaroğlu and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The CHP’s proposal to establish a joint parliamentary commission seems to be deadlocked after the MHP categorically rejected the proposal.

Kılıçdaroğlu said the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) should also make efforts to convince the MHP to join the commission.

“While we are calling on the MHP to come together, the prime minister uses a strong language against the MHP. That is another way to say ‘MHP don’t come to the table.’ The AKP bears responsibility on the issue as well, they use a more moderate language,” Kılıçdaroğlu said.

PM criticizes
Erdoğan maintained his harsh criticism against the MHP yesterday.“The MHP and the BDP should give up keeping watch in front of [a] mortuary. They should give up abusing our martyrs and terrorist funerals,” he said yesterday at a party meeting in Antalya.

MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli once again said that they are against the CHP’s proposal and argued that there is no Kurdish question in Turkey.

“The brotherhood of this nation should not be overshadowed with concept confusion. If you say there is a Kurdish problem, will you consider the people coming from Diyarbakır to Antalya to earn a living as a problem? We have to lay stress on the fight against terror. The AKP and CHP follow the roadmap of [Abdullah Öcalan], this is shameful,” Bahçeli said in Antalya.

Asked whether the MHP has a study on terror problem, Bahçeli said that they have well-prepared studies for every issue.

Kılıçdaroğlu gave a cold shoulder to suggestions on establishing a commission without the MHP. “The process cannot be launched without the MHP within the Parliament,” Kılıçdaroğlu said, adding that there’s no need to become desperate. “We can convince the MHP. I don’t think that the MHP administration becomes happy when soldiers become martyrs,” he said.

In further comments, Kılıçdaroğlu said that he is ready to pay any price to put an end to the Kurdish issue. “If a resolution on the [Kurdish] issue causes for me to step down, I’m ready to sacrifice my chairmanship,” he said.