Erdoğan’s ‘system push’ ended Kurdish bid: HDP

Emine Kart - ANKARA

Oğuz Demir / HÜRRİYET photo

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s bid to shift Turkey from a parliamentary system to a presidential system is responsible for torpedoing the Kurdish peace process, Kurdish-problem focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Figen Yüksekdağ said on June 19.

“Why was the table knocked down a year ago? There is only one reason: Will the new constitution be a democratic one or will it be a constitution including the presidential system. That is why the table was knocked down,” Yüksekdağ said. 

Clashes erupted once again in July 2015 between Turkish security forces and militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) last summer, after a peace process had sought to put an end to the decades-long conflict.

“Tayyip Erdoğan and the forces that are being dragged behind him have imposed a disaster to Turkey,” Yüksekdağ told the Hürriyet Daily News, referring to ongoing clashes in several eastern and southeastern provinces, as well as the overall environment of insecurity across Turkey. 


Questioning anti-terror operations

Yüksekdağ also slammed the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for the ongoing operations, saying they targeted innocent locals. 

“There are no anti-terror operations going on because anti-terror operations only aim to neutralize those who have weapons in their hands,” she said. 

“What do you want from a two-year-old child? What do you want from a woman, a mother of five kids, standing in front of her house? What do you want from an unborn child? What do you want from a 75-year-old man who is returning home carrying bread 15 minutes before the curfew starts? An unbelievable amount of destruction in cities has been carried out. Houses have been deliberately demolished after the clashes ended on the pretext that the surrounding area needs to be swept clear of mines. There are towns that have been turned into rubble and stones. This violence is not directed at armed groups. You could only do this if you hate a people, a nation. You could only do it if you want to punish them,” Yüksekdağ added.

“They made a plan in 2014 but we learnt about this later when it was exposed. The ‘Çöktürme Planı’ [Destruction Plan] was somehow leaked,” she also said, referring to an alleged plan to completely annihilate the PKK in a method similar to the Sri Lanka government’s destruction of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) organization.

In December 2015, HDP honorary chair Ertuğrul Kürkçü, presented a parliamentary question to be addressed by then-Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.

“According to information reported in the media, there are claims about a ‘confidential’ action plan, named ‘Çöktürme’ by the Strategy Branch of the General Staff Strategy Planning Department, prepared by the Undersecretariat of Public Order and Security, and presented to the General Staff Command in September 2014. Among the claims were that a war simulation aims to implement against the PKK a model of annihilation that the Sri Lanka government launched against the Tamil Tigers organization, which was fighting for the independence of Tamil land,” Kürkçü said in his question.

The Parliament Speaker’s Office, however, refused to process the parliamentary question and returned it to Kürkçü in January.