Turkish Deputy PM accuses opposition of not supporting Kurdish peace process

ANKARA

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Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan has criticized the main opposition leader over remarks suggesting that the Republican People’s Party (CHP) will only negotiate with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) about the Kurdish peace process if the social democratic party wins the June 7 polls.

“Who do we talk to? We talk to the HDP. We wanted to talk to the CHP as well, but they have not joined us,” Akdoğan told Anadolu News Agency on April 28. 

Nobody, including the main opposition CHP and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), supported the ruling party as it was putting reforms into effect, Akdoğan said, identifying those reforms as “silent revolution.”  

But, those parties are “unashamedly arguing that they would continue the peace process in this or that way,” Akdoğan said, adding that opposition parties had never lent support for any attempts on peace processes for the past 13 years. 

Citing remarks by CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s that his party would conduct the peace process with the HDP as its sole interlocutor – because only it is the legal representative of the Kurdish movement – Akdoğan said his party was pursuing talks with the HDP as well. 

“We wanted to discuss this with you, too. Did you? We set up a commission in parliament. Did you assign any member to the parliament committee?” Akdoğan asked the CHP. “Lawmakers of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and HDP were member of the committee, not the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). But you abstained from assigning any member there.” 

Intelligence services can have contacts with anyone, but only legal political actors are interlocutors of governments, Akdoğan said.

“There is already the HDP. Meet the HDP if you like. And the HDP will hold talks with whoever they want. But you [as the government] should deal with legitimate interlocutors. And that interlocutor is the HDP, as one of the legitimate actors of Turkey’s political life,” Kılıçdaroğlu told journalists April 27.