Diyarbakır Governor reacts to BDP’s call

DİYARBAKIR - Doğan News Agency

Gov Toprak says that people will not heed BDP’s boycott call. AA photo

Diyarbakır Gov. Mustafa Toprak reacted fiercely to the Peace and Democracy Party’s (BDP) call to boycott work, school and generally halt life on Oct. 30 in solidarity with the PKK and KCK hunger strikes continuing in 58 prisons nationwide. Toprak claimed that people would not heed this call. “The directives given to those who act as the slaves of the organization show their real faces. They act as if they are civilian formations, but they are not.”

Toprak said there were instructions and threats to boycott schools at the beginning of the academic year but people did not listen to them.

“Our citizens want to live happily in peace together with their children, family, environment and in unity and togetherness with the nation and the country. All kinds of threats directed to them and to their future are considered cruelty. To be involved in negative activities such as forcing families not to send their children to school, stopping civil servants from going to work, blocking buses and making shops close will consequently be fed by blood, by the violence on the streets and by problems on the streets. Hence, the people are aware of all these possibilities and they do not credit them. They rightfully do not respect such incorrect calls. They will not do so in the future either.”

On Oct. 28, BDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş called on supporters of his party to join the hunger strike by pausing their lives for one day.

In a meeting in the southeastern province of Adana, Demirtaş asked supporters “not to open their shops, not to send their children to school and not to shop on Oct. 30.”

“By halting daily life on Tuesday, by shutting off our cars’ engines, closing up our shops and boycotting schools we can shout out our demands,” Demirtaş said.