Turkey slams European Parliament Rapporteur Piri over ‘PKK remarks’

ANKARA – Anadolu Agency

Turkish EU Minister Ömer Çelik on Jan. 28 criticized the European Parliament’s Turkey Rapporteur Kati Piri over her recent remarks about the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) “not being a threat.”

“For us the PKK and its variations are not a threat,” Piri said in a recent interview. 

Referring to Piri’s statement, Çelik on his Twitter account wrote “such wrong views” will not be taken seriously by the Turkish side.

“Piri partly continues with the wrong view by saying that ‘the number one threat for Turkey is not ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant], but PKK.’ It is actually very rare to see such an open statement of this ugly approach toward terrorism,” he added.

Çelik said Turkey is the only country which is fighting against both ISIL and PKK militants “at the same time and on equal footing.”

“It is obvious that the PKK is supported in some parts of Europe. When Turkey was attacked by ISIL, we saw solidarity in some European cities when they projected Turkish flags on public buildings. But we never saw such solidarity when PKK attacked us,” the minister added.

“As Piri and similar circles think that mankind is living only around their geography, they only regard the ones who threaten them as terrorists, but they don’t perceive any threat from the ones who attack others. It is clear that there is a problem here about how they view humans even before how they view terrorism,” Çelik said.

He stated that the “wrong view” on such terror groups allow them to “easily find ideological habitats” and described Piri with such “wrong view” reporting on Turkey at the European Parliament as “unfortunate.”

“It is a tragedy that a politician, who doesn’t have the abc level knowledge on these issues or who rejects these even if she knows them, is the rapporteur for Turkey in the biggest parliament of Europe,” he said.

The EU minister further stressed Turkey’s commitment to continue its fight against “all kinds of terror groups including ISIL and PKK.”