Opposition calls on gov’t to continue İmralı process

BEIJING - Hürriyet Daily News

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (L) drinks tea upon his arrival at the Chinese capital of Beijing yesterday. DHA photo

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has maintained that the killings of three Kurdish militants in Paris should not negatively affect the ongoing peace process in the country.

“The [İmralı] process should not be affected by this incident. If the government is determined to move this process forward then it should go ahead,” Kılıçdaroğlu told Ankara bureau chiefs on a flight to China early Jan. 13.

The opposition leader also stated that questioning the French president’s meetings with members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) when Turkish state institutions have begun new talks with the group is weird. “Won’t they ask you why you meet with these people? You had better think twice about your actions and your words before questioning others. You are holding meetings with them [members of the terror organization] and you ask them [French officials] why they meet,” he said.

Kılıçdaroğlu was referring to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s public criticism of French President François Hollande, who had said he knew one of the victims of the murder.

Still Kılıçdaroğlu joined Erdoğan’s call for French officials to shed light on the incident and to arrest the perpetrators of the killings. He said the assassinations should not block the process launched by the government. The murders of the three Kurdish militants came in the first week of a peace process launched by the government in a bid to solve the Kurdish question and resolve the terror problem. The process placed the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, at the center, with two Kurdish deputies visiting him on İmralı island last week.

‘Seems like an execution’

Kılıçdaroğlu added that the killings of the three women seemed to him, without knowing the motives behind them, to be an execution, and he said they were closely following the issue. “The location of the murder is an area known to be under the surveillance of French intelligence. The responsibility to explain the murders lies on the shoulders of the French government.”

Kılıçdaroğlu said he was stunned by Erdoğan’s reaction after the CHP issued a line of credit to the government in its attempt to solve the problem. “Addressing the main opposition’s positive stance in a negative manner is an indication of their unwillingness to solve the problem.”

Calling the government to inform Parliament about the ongoing process, Kılıçdaroğlu said the most important thing the government lacked was the pursuit of societal consensus. “I think the members of the government have no sense of societal consensus at all.”

Kılıçdaroğlu denied claims that there was a crack in governmental attempts to solve the issue. “We the CHP are aware of our responsibility to solve the three-decade-old problem. There is no meaning in reacting against moves to solve this problem.”