KurdistanObserver.com
Pro-Kurdish Leader Vows Loyalty to Turkey's Unity
The Associated Press
Monday, September 3, 2007
ISTANBUL, Turkey: A pro-Kurdish leader whose party is often
accused of having ties with separatist rebels said Monday his party was
committed to solving Turkey's Kurdish question without challenging the country's
unity.
Ahmet Turk, of Democratic Society Party, or DTP, delivered one of the first
speeches by a pro-Kurdish lawmaker in Parliament in more than a decade. The
party's legislators were ousted from the assembly in the early 1990s and spent
more than a decade in prison for speaking Kurdish while taking the oath of
office.
Turk and 19 others are the first DTP members to have entered Parliament since
then. The party fielded all of its candidates as independents in last month's
general elections to get around a 10-percent threshold required for parties to
win representation on the 550-seat Parliament.
His comments were made during a debate over the prime minister's policy,
outlined last week after the election of the former foreign minister, Abdullah
Gul, to the presidency.
The DTP legislators are seeking more rights for Turkey's Kurdish minority.
An armed rebel group, Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, has been fighting the
government forces for autonomy since 1984 in a conflict that has cost tens of
thousands of lives.
The pro-Kurdish party is often criticized by other parties for failing to brand
the PKK a terrorist organization.
"We are looking for a solution along the lines of unity and brotherhood, without
questioning Turkey's indivisibility or its unity," Turk said.
Turk criticized the government, however, for failing to remove restrictions on
the freedom of expression, specifically article 301 of the Turkish penal code
which has been used to prosecute intellectuals including Nobel Prize winner
Orhan Pamuk for his comments on the mass killings of Armenians and Turkey's
Kurdish question.
"There's no concrete step taken to ban articles that restrain the freedom of
expression, including article 301," Turk said.
"There's no point in talking about other aspects of democracy as long as there
is no tolerance for different opinions," Turk said.
