CHP no longer a hurdle before peace process, HDP says

ANKARA

AA Photo

The government should no longer blame the social democrat opposition party for its hesitancy in taking more steps regarding the Kurdish resolution process, Sebahat Tuncel of the People’s Democracy Party (HDP) has said.

Tuncel’s remarks were in reference to the social democrat Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s positive messages in Diyarbakır on June 20.

“You were depicting the opposition as the obstacle, up until now. Recently, the leader of the main opposition went to Diyarbakır and said ‘the ongoing peace process should have a legal frame.’ Here, you have no obstacle before you. Right after this, the peace process should immediately have a legal frame with concrete steps for democratically resolving the Kurdish question,” Sabahat Tuncel, co-chairperson of the HDP said in her address to the party’s convention on June 22.

Tuncel referred to Kılıçdaroğlu who was in Diyarbakır on June 20 and gave positive messages about the Kurdish problem in a bid to break Kurdish citizens’ prejudices of toward the CHP.

Tuncel called the government to uphold the peace process launched in 2013 by imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Öcalan and reiterated their readiness to contribute to peace. “We will do everything to discharge our responsibility, but we will not allow one thing: We will continue to struggle against those who build new security walls, military outposts and sabotage this process instead of developing it,” she said.

Demirtaş: We’ll support Turkey-Kurdistan ties

Selahattin Demirtaş, who is expected to be elected as the co-leader of the HDP, along with Figen Yüksekdağ of the Socialist Party for the Oppressed (ESP), said it was time for Kurds to stand united as the entire region was suffering from racism, fascism and sectarian wars. “We have to be united if we want to prevent those sovereign powers that had drawn the borders 100 years ago from shaping our fate,” he stressed. 

A nation-state based on single identity is nothing good to Kurds, Demirtaş said, and the ideal model for Turkey and the Middle East is the one that regards all identities, faiths and sects equally and treats them equally.

“We will develop our relations with neighboring peoples and countries on this understanding and we will defend the right to live of all peoples and cultures. We will support growing ties between Turkey-Kurdistan, particularly Rojava [in Syria] and the Kurdistan Federate Region [in Iraq] and this relation will contribute to regional peace,” he said. 

‘HDP a real alternative to gov’t’

Demirtaş said the HDP will introduce a right address for the people who had to lend support to the CHP and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) because of the lack of an alternative. “It’s time to show it to our people. We should work very much and conclude our structuring in 81 provinces before next year’s parliamentary elections,” he stressed.

Referring to upcoming presidential elections, Demirtaş said the HDP will appoint a “genuine candidate” against two “state appointees.”