Gov’t reaffirms will to go ahead with peace process, calls on HDP to adopt peaceful policies

ANKARA

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu speaks during the parliamentary group meeting of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Nov. 4. AFP Photo

As the quarrel between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) over the Kurdish peace process continues to roil Ankara politics, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu expressed his government’s determination to continue the process but stressed it will “not allow any effort to disrupt the public order.”

“I am once again calling out: Our government’s will on the resolution process is solid and firm. No one should doubt this. However, our will to protect public order for the success of the resolution process is equally solid and firm. If agreed on these issues, all actors doing their best [for the process] are our interlocutors. In the end, we have managed to walk all these difficult paths together,” Davutoğlu told lawmakers at the AKP’s parliamentary group meeting on Nov. 4.

The prime minister urged the HDP to adopt “peaceful, democratic policies” and to “stop violent acts” if it wants to continue walking with the government for the resolution of the Kurdish problem.

“Our determination will continue. But if their expectation is to create a de facto situation by undermining public order in the east [of the country] while continuing the peace process, we will never allow this,” he added.

Having issued this call to the HDP, Davutoğlu stressed the party’s responsibility in launching last month’s massive street uprising that claimed the lives of more than two dozen people, asking it to “examine its own policies” regarding the peace process. “They are making calls to the government as if they have no role in any of this vandalism, this pressure, and this brutality that was committed under the cover of Kobane,” he said, referring to the predominantly Kurdish city in northern Syria that has been besieged by militant jihadists for over a month.

“What they have to do is to adopt peaceful democratic politics. They will lose their role as interlocutor if they make excuses for violence,” Davutoğlu said, calling on the HDP to describe the incidents of Oct. 6 and 7 as “treachery to democracy and to the peace process.”  

‘This region is not good for cowards’

Meanwhile, responding to opposition criticism of the government’s policies in the region, Davutoğlu claimed that Turkey had become one of the most important actors of the international agenda thanks to the AKP’s vision.

“It will continue to be so. This region cannot be the region of the inactive, the coward and the timid. This is the region of those who can [write] history with their tenacity, determination and courage. Otherwise we cannot stand,” he said.