Demirtaş points to Ankara for Kurdish peace process solution

ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency

AFP photo

After meetings with the leaders of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) European branch in the Belgian capital, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş has said the address to solve the Kurdish peace process was the Turkish capital rather than Brussels. 

Speaking during a live televised program on Med Nuçe TV in Brussels, Demirtaş said if the address to reach a ceasefire was Brussels, then it would have been much easier to reach a solution, but the real address was Ankara, where the HDP and PKK await the government to take action. 

“The address where the ceasefire will be reached is not here [Brussels]. I wish it was so; it would have been very easy. I am confident that even if there was a one-in-a-million possibility for my visit to turn into peace then we could have reached it. The place of the government, which ended the process and toppled the government, is Ankara,” Demirtaş said Aug. 6. 

Demirtaş made an unscheduled visit to Brussels to meet with Zübeyir Aydar and Remzi Kartal, two leading PKK figures based in Europe. Aydar is a member of the executive council of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the alleged urban wing of the PKK, and Kartal is the co-leader of Kongra-Gel, an offshoot of the PKK.

Demirtaş said it was the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government which did not respond positively to the Kurdish peace process, adding even though people were most certainly expecting a result from his meetings in Brussels, the work conducted in Ankara would be what puts pressure on the government to continue with the resolution process. 

Stating President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP government only had the PKK laying down its arms on their minds, Demirtaş said, “I wish that was possible.” 

“We do not object. We are a political party that has been established to conduct politics. We would long for an unarmed environment more than you but we want it to happen with reasonable methods [and in] the way in which it was put forth,” Demirtaş said. 

Demirtaş said the PKK and KCK announced they did not want to be the party that breaks the process and that they were loyal to the Dolmabahçe agreement reached on Feb. 28 with the government. 

Verifying claims that deputies from his party had met with the Undersecretariat of Public Order and Security in the past few days, Demirtaş said these meetings had taken place on their request.

“But for us to say that this is a tangible development, there needs to be a return to the negotiation conditions that was identified and said verbally at the Dolmabahçe agreement,” Demirtaş said. “Other than this it would once again be an instrument of deception and cheating policies.”