Turkey’s main opposition files criminal complaint against president, gov’t for ‘aiding terror’

ANKARA

DHA Photo

The main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) has filed a criminal complaint into President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Chief Hakan Fidan and other senior officials, on charges of “aiding and abetting a terrorist organization.” The complaint relates to their involvement the long-stalled peace process aimed at ending the three-decade long conflict between Turkey’s security forces and militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 

CHP Deputy Chair Bülent Tezcan filed the complaints about Erdoğan, Davutoğlu, Fidan, Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan, Interior Minister Efkan Ala, former Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay, related state officials and provincial governors to the Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office on March 8.

Tezcan’s move followed CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s remarks accusing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of aiding a terrorist organization by “overlooking the stockpiling of weapons by the PKK” throughout the peace process. Provincial chairs of the CHP are also expected to file similar complaints shortly. 

In his complaint, Tezcan claimed that since 2009 the AKP has followed a strategy simply based on encouraging the PKK toward non-conflict during election periods rather than trying to resolve the Kurdish issue sustainably.

“More fatally, just in order to go through election periods calmly, the terrorist organization’s activities of transferring and piling up weaponry, both in rural areas and in urban centers, were openly overlooked,” he said, recalling that only eight of 290 requests to conduct anti-terror operations by the Turkish Armed Forces received a positive response from governors during the period.

Tezcan also presented a protocol dating back to secret talks held in Oslo between the AKP and the PKK, as well as minutes of meetings between the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, state officials, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and its predecessor the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), before and during the now collapsed peace process.

Öcalan was captured by Turkish security forces in Kenya in 1999 and is currently serving a life sentence on the island prison of İmralı on the Marmara Sea. After late 2012 he played a central role in the peace process aimed at ending the conflict between Turkey’s security forces and PKK militants, which has killed thousands since it started in the late 1970s.

Violence between the Turkish security forces and PKK militants reignited last summer, shattering the fragile peace process after a two-and-a-half-year de facto ceasefire.