HDP tables censure motion against interior minister over repeated bomb attacks

Emine Kart - ANKARA

AA photo

A Turkish opposition party has tabled a censure motion against Interior Minister Efkan Ala of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for his failure to take the required measures which would have prevented the rights violations, victimizations, deaths and bomb attacks the country has witnessed as a result of practices enforced under the name of “curfews” in Turkey’s southeast.

The censure motion was presented to the Parliament Speaker’s Office on June 30 by the two deputy parliamentary group chairs of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

“Even though residential areas were seriously damaged during curfews declared in provincial centers and seven district centers and hundreds of thousands of people have migrated, either this fact is still being kept from the public opinion or the masses are being manipulated by this fact being presented as ‘the fight against terror,’” Çağlar Demirel and İdris Baluken of the HDP, both deputies in the predominantly Kurdish-populated southeastern province of Diyarbakır, said in their motion.

According to NGOs and local sources, the size of the migration within Turkey as a result of clashes was much higher than what the state had announced, Demirel and Baluken said. According to figures announced by these NGOs and local sources, at least 1.6 million people have been subjected to forced migration because of the past year’s environment of conflict, the HDP deputies said.


‘Mercy of TOKİ’

“By leaving the cities to the mercy of TOKİ [the Turkish Housing Development Administration], the government is, on one hand, aiming to break the bond between residential areas and their history by destroying their cultural memory, and on the other hand aiming to create a large economic rental area,” they argued.

Demirel and Baluken suggested hundreds of practices considered “war crimes” by international law have been taking place in Turkey’s southeast.

“These practices, which are projects of depopulation, are based on a demographic change with Kurds and Alevis and they have been continuing,” they said.

The recalled that Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport was swiftly reopened to operation, despite the losses of dozens of lives in a June 28 triple suicide attack.

“Serious doubts have emerged after [Atatürk] Airport, which was praised for being one of the most secure airports in the world, experienced this kind of security gap even though it was seen from the security cameras that one of the suicide bombers was wearing a winter coat,” they remarked. 

“With this, how much the government cares about human life has once more manifested,” said the deputy parliamentary leaders of the HDP, the third largest party in the national assembly. 

“In the last year, 17 bomb attacks have been launched in Turkey. In these attacks, 298 people in total have lost their lives. Almost 1,000 people have been wounded,” they said.

“As a result, instead of strategies that could bring an end to all the conflicts that are painting the whole country red and making people cry their hearts out, the statements and practices of President [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] and the spokespersons of the government are signaling that the conflicts will increase,” they said.

“Within this context, an obligation has occurred to once more remind that Interior Minister Efkan Ala is the prime responsible authority and release a censure motion about him within the picture that has emerged due to deaths and destruction,” they concluded.