MHP leader slams gov’t over dialogue

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

The talks are the first step of dividng the country, says Bahçeli. AA photo

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of contradicting himself by questioning French President François Hollande’s meetings with one of the recently killed members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

“Won’t they [French politicians] ask you why their meetings [with PKK members] are odd, when you are holding talks with the head of terrorists,” he said in Kızılcahamam district yesterday.

“When you are giving him a television, and bringing him within the political circle? How will Erdoğan respond to such a question?” Bahçeli added. He was referring to the recent talks with imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan that were launched by the government in order to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict with the PKK.

Bahçeli’s reaction came after Erdoğan publicly criticized the French president, who said he knew one of the victims of the murder that took place in central Paris and claimed the lives of three Kurdish women. One of the victims was Sakine Cansız, a founding member of the PKK.

The MHP leader described the killing of the women in Paris as the outcome of a “bloody equation.” “It’s natural and inevitable that members of a terrorist network which has a profession of killing and murdering are faced with such an end. It is either the result of an internal settling of accounts, or the outcome of secret relations between the intelligence organizations of different countries,” Bahçeli said.

Erdoğan’s questioning of Hollande’s meetings with PKK members is also useless when considered against European countries’ relations with the outlawed group, he added. “For years they have remained silent and even promoted the PKK’s raising of funds and collecting of militants. Otherwise, how can we explain a situation in which the separatist organization has settled in downtown Paris?”

Bahçeli also played down comments suggesting that the killings may be the work of groups opposed to recent talks with Öcalan.

“Saying that the bloody plot in Paris was carried out to halt the negotiations with İmralı [where Öcalan is serving life sentence] is a denial of reason and wisdom. The Peace and Democracy Party’s [BDP] pointing at the deep state for those killings is a result of its depravation and is a habit inherited from the [ruling Justice and Development Party] AKP,” Bahçeli said.