No Kurdish citizen is marginalized, Erdoğan says at rally in Turkey’s east

VAN

No Kurdish citizen is marginalized in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told crowds in the eastern province of Van during a campaign rally on June 19.

“It doesn’t concern me if you are Kurdish, Turkish or Georgian. What concerns me is the fact that the God who created me also created you. I love the created because of the creator,” Erdoğan added.

“Whose life has been interfered in? [The Kurdish person] is my brother,” he said, adding that anyone who is “disrespectful” to Kurds would have to face the president himself.

In his speech, Erdoğan blasted the the Kurdish issue-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) , which won 75 percent of the votes in Van in the general elections held on June 7, 2015. In the April 2017 referendum on shifting to an executive presidential system, 57 percent of Van voters said “no.”

“Van is ours. The locals of Van are ours. We will not give permission to terrorists, sinners and vampires thirsty for the blood of people here,” Erdoğan said.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is the party that “revived” Van after a deadly 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the eastern province, killing more than 570 people in 2011, he added.

“What have the allies of the terrorist network ever done? What have they ever done with the capital that was meant to serve you? They sent it to Kandil instead,” Erdoğan said, referring to the headquarters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).