I know nothing about ruling AKP's plan: Main opposition leader

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

CHP leader replied questions in a visit to a factory in Istanbul’s Çekmeköy district. DHA photo

Republican People’s Party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has expressed his confusion about the government’s efforts to bring peace to Turkey, saying he understood neither the Kurdish peace process nor the democracy package. 

Speaking at a meeting in Istanbul yesterday, Kılıçdaroğlu said he and his party did not know the details of the peace process and the democracy package, both of which are initiatives of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. 

“I do not know what the peace process is. I would be very happy if someone who knows it can explain it to me. We also do not know about the democratization package the government is bringing. You are going to bring democracy to a country but the public will not know about it. There is no such thing. Can there be democracy without the knowledge of the public?” said Kılıçdaroğlu. 

The CHP chief said negotiations were being held as part of the Kurdish peace process but that even AKP deputies were in the dark about the details of the wheeling and dealing. 

“There is Prime Minister [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan at the one end of the table and [outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader] Abdullah Öcalan at the other end. The citizens of this country learn the details about the peace process from [the PKK camps in northern Iraq in] Kandil. This is what is shameful. You prepare the ground for 76 million people to look at [Kandil]. There are negotiations going on, but nobody knows. Not even the AKP deputies know it. Five people know about it, there is not a sixth person,” said Kılıçdaroğlu. 

Commenting on Turkey’s current foreign policy, Kılıçdaroğlu criticized the government’s war-oriented foreign policy and said Turkey had no neighbors left to talk to.

Instead, Kılıçdaroğlu said Turkey’s foreign policy should be peace-oriented. Recalling the words of Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, “Peace at home, peace in the world” and “War is murder unless it is imperative,” Kılıçdaroğlu said: “These are the words of people who have been engaged in war and who paid a cost. Because of this, our foreign policy should be peace-oriented. There cannot be any war-oriented foreign policy. Turkey does not have any neighbors whose doors it can knock on – Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Iran.”

Kılıçdaroğlu also said the government had not interpreted the situation in Syria correctly, mistaking the Arab republic instead for Libya during the civil war in 2011.

“The government could not read Syria well. They considered Syria to be like Libya, as in, ‘We will go there, put the knife in their back and [take it out] too. One who cannot interpret Syria means he does not know world balances. How could the Turkish Republic’s government not know how important Syria is for Russia?” said Kılıçdaroğlu, adding that government policies toward Egypt were no different.