PM Erdoğan: Kurdish Issue Started by CHP and its Leader İnönü, 70 Years Ago

Turkey should be able to separate the Kurdish problem from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, problem, the prime minister said Friday, describing the former as a question created by Turkey’s second president, İsmet İnönü, and head of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, some 70 years ago.

“The Kurdish question is our problem,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in his party’s election rally in Van, a southeastern Anatolia city, where he re-iterated his earlier stance in describing the issue as the Kurdish question. He was very much criticized when he said last month, “There is no Kurdish question, but problems of my Kurdish people.”

Erdoğan said the course in solving the Kurdish issue has been changed since 2002, as they have ceased to ignore the existence of the problem. Outlining five documents issued by İnönü in the late 1940s that prohibited the use of Kurdish and ordered the confiscation of books written in the language. “Dear residents of Van! When you were suffering this pain here in Van, we were suffering the same pains in Istanbul. This period of denial has lasted until we came to power.”

The police and gendarmerie have taken extraordinary security measures in the city in order to prevent a potential dispute between the ruling and pro-Kurdish party fans. However tight security measures in the eastern province of Van ahead of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s election rally Friday did not dissuade protesters from taking to the streets for a mass prayer.

Despite a crackdown resembling the days when the region was under a state of emergency, some 5,000 members and supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP, gathered outside to hold their midday prayers at a park instead of in a mosque.

Imams in Turkey are selected and assigned by the state. The BDP has charged the government with using religion as a political tool.

Hundreds of police officers silently joined in the act of civil disobedience, held just hours before Erdoğan was set to arrive. The thousands of people who showed up for the prayer dispersed silently, without a trace of slogans or banners.

“They used to say the religion of Kurds is Zerdust, not Islam. Who said that? The man in İmralı and those who follow him,” Erdoğan said Thursday at a campaign event in Siirt, referring to the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

“What do they do now? They say, ‘You cannot pray behind the state’s imam; gather elsewhere.’ The Friday prayer is about being together. They try such things to break our togetherness,” the prime minister said.

Some people on the streets of Van had suggested that Kurdish people boycott Erdoğan’s election rally Friday, because the prime minister “did not treat Kurdish people well, and did not contribute enough to solving the Kurdish issue.”

Erdoğan had promised he would give important message on the issue during his rally in Van, but residents said before the rally that they are tired of promises and want action. Even those who say they will vote for his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, agree that its Kurdish initiative had not attained its goal. People in the region have therefore pinned their hopes on the new Parliament that will be created after the June 12 general elections.

While the Kurdish issue has yet to be solved, the upcoming elections do provide a certain amount of hope, lawyer Orhan Hemetoğlu, the head of the Van Bar Association, told the Daily News. “We want to stop the bloodshed, and the new Parliament and the new constitution [to be written after the election] could be hope for this,” he said.

The failure of the Kurdish initiative created a sense of hopelessness among locals, said Ferit Hayva, the owner of the newspaper Van Olay. This “will be reflected in the elections for the AKP,” he said.

The growing reaction to the AKP is evident on the streets of Van, where independent deputies supported by a BDP-led bloc have set up election offices around the city. Slogans against the AKP and Erdoğan are becoming prominent as members of the BDP blame the ruling party for the lack of a solution.

Fear that the increasing levels of reaction will turn into physical actions has brought the city back to its former state-of-emergency days. Security forces have set up blockades on all streets and neighborhoods. Streets surrounding the prime minister’s rally point were closed to traffic hours before he was set to arrive and individuals entering the area on foot were being searched by security forces.

Riot police, special operations teams, special teams trained against terrorist attacks, and civilian police officers were all deployed to the area starting early in the morning. The scene was identical to the late 1990s when a state of emergency was announced and armored vehicles and police officers armed with gas masks, bulletproof vests and rifles took over the city. But the Van security forces did not find this enough, and brought in back up from surrounding provinces, including Adana and Mersin. Locals do not seem phased as the walked the streets, and police officers were noticeably kind.

The precautions in the city were defended by Mustafa Bilici, a candidate from the AKP. According to him, BDP supporters throw Molotov cocktails at the AKP offices, pressure them and prevent them from campaigning.

But the independent deputy from the BDP disagreed. “They are the ones pressuring us. Don’t you see the scene here in Van? A state of emergency has been announced just because the prime minister is holding a rally. All security forces in the East and Southeast of Turkey are here. Is this how they’re going to bring democracy and freedom to the region?” he asked.
May 20, 2011

SOURCE: Hürriyet Daily News