Interior minister irks BDP MPs with ‘pathetic’ remark

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

‘There is a cursed structure which doesn’t promise anything other than blood, grudges and death, and there are 18 pathetic deputies who tried to serve this structure in Diyarbakır on July 14,’ says Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin. AA photo

Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin yesterday blamed deputies of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) for the clashes on Saturday between police and demonstrators in Diyarbakır, suggesting that it was the BDP deputies who provoked the police in the first place.

Şahin, speaking at a press conference, strongly rejected claims that the police had particularly targeted BDP deputies during the incident in Diyarbakır and wounded them deliberately. He called such claims “101 percent lies and slander,” and said that on the contrary it was the BDP deputies who had threatened the security forces.

“The police didn’t carry out any illegal action,” Şahin said, before going on to criticize the BDP. “There is no single positive motive. … There is a cursed structure which doesn’t promise anything other than blood, grudges and death, and there are 18 pathetic deputies who tried to serve this structure in Diyarbakır on July 14,” he said, in an apparent reference to suggested links between the BDP and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

‘State terror’
The BDP’s response to Şahin came swiftly in a written press statement released later in the day. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, who said on Monday that the BDP deputies had openly committed crimes, was also targeted in the BDP’s statement.

Arınç’s remarks “display that he doesn’t truly want a democratic solution [to the Kurdish issue],” the statement said.

“Asking for a democratic solution and peace is not a crime. On the contrary, to prevent people from voicing their demands and their democratic reaction is a crime,” the BDP said, while accusing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of practicing “state terror.”

“The interior minister – who is the one responsible for the state terror experienced in Diyarbakır – attacks both people and their will in a terrible way. He also exposes his own pitifulness and burnout by saying ‘there are 18 pitiful deputies in Diyarbakır.’”

Diyarbakır was the scene of street battles July 14, as police across the city used pepper spray and water cannons to break up Kurdish demonstrations in support of a BDP rally that had earlier been banned by the provincial government.

Turkey’s Kurdish issue-focused BDP planned the “Democratic Resistance for Freedom Rally” in order to protest the large-scale detentions in the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) probe, as well as the “isolation policy” for Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK. Amidst the scuffle in Diyarbakır, a parliamentarian’s leg was broken, and Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir was also wounded by a police baton.