CHP asks questions on Oslo meets

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

CHP spokesperson Haluk Koç speaks to reporters at a press conference. AA photo

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) spokesperson Haluk Koç yesterday addressed several questions to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan concerning talks between the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and representatives of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that were held abroad between 2009 and 2011 in a series of meetings publicly known as the “Oslo talks.” The talks collapsed after a PKK attack killed 13 soldiers near Silvan in Diyarbakır in July 2011.

“He is the one that demonstrated the will to organize meetings between a terror organization’s militants and the state with the mediation and the ‘coordination’ — as was dubbed within the texts — of some European countries. It is the prime minister who spoils the PKK, who pats them on the back and who says ‘Oh mercy! Do not take any action until these June 2011 [parliamentary] elections; inform us about any public servant, security official, any member of the TSK [Turkish Armed Forces] that deters you and we will solve the issue somehow,’” Koç said, speaking at a press conference while a Central Executive Board (MYK) was underway at the party’s headquarters.

“How many letters did the state officials, whom you assigned before and during the Oslo plots, take from İmralı to Kandil?” Koç said, directing the question to Erdoğan in an apparent reference to the prison island of İmralı where PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan has been held and Kandil Mountain in northern Iraq where PKK militants are based.