Main opposition leader repeats call for Kurdish solution in Parliament

ANKARA

Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu speaks in a conference at Ankara’s Bilkent University.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has repeated his call on the government to carry out efforts to solve Turkey’s decades-old Kurdish insurgency under the roof of Parliament, rather than in talks “behind closed doors.”

“Let’s all shoulder responsibility and resolve this problem. Let’s form a reconciliation committee [in Parliament],” Kılıçdaroğlu said on Oct. 23, speaking in a conference at Ankara’s Bilkent University.

He criticized the government for taking a party political approach to the issue, saying the question went “beyond a question of political parties.”

“Thirty years of experience has shown us that a solution of this problem is possible only with political unity,” Kılıçdaroğlu said.

The CHP leader criticized the way the government has dealt with the issue in behind closed doors talks with the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan.

“Nobody knows what they are talking about, which promises they are making … We are now discussing a process that we have no information about,” Kılıçdaroğlu said.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Altan Tan also argued that the peace process should be transparent “as far as possible” and should be carried out open to the public.

Speaking to reporters on Oct. 23, Tan said the government had not submitted the peace process road map, reportedly made up off 200 pages, to the HDP, which is one of the government’s key interlocutors in the process along with Öcalan.

He accused the government of being “unserious” about the process and said it was hiding behind the argument of “state secrets” to conduct the process.