Kurdistan Observer

Kurd party Slams Turk Govt, Army, EU Over Clashes

ANKARA, April 14 (Reuters & TDN) - Turkey's main Kurdish political party accused the government of doing nothing to tackle the problems of the mainly Kurdish southeast and also expressed disappointment with the attitude of the EU.

Ahmet Turk, co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), said his party was ready to work to ensure that the Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) lays down its arms and proposed methods similar to those used in Britain and Spain to deal with IRA and ETA.

“Circumstances in Turkey are different than those in Spain. But what should be done is to develop a policy and resolve the problem on the basis of that policy. The IRA and ETA problems were not resolved automatically. Someone got involved, projects were developed and some convincing was done. This is what we want to do,” Turk told the Turkish Daily News.

Turk's DTP issued a report yesterday accusing the government of doing nothing to tackle the problems of the mainly Kurdish Southeast and expressing disappointment with the attitude of the EU.

“The army and the government do not want the Kurdish problem to be solved. ... If the soldiers and the government wanted a solution, weapons would immediately fall silent,” said Hasip Kaplan, deputy head of the DTP. “The solution of the problem lies in Ankara,” he told a news conference devoted to civil disturbances that recently hit southeastern provinces as well as Istanbul, leaving 16 people dead.

"The solution of the problem lies in Ankara," he told a news conference devoted to the recent civil disturbances.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has refused to meet DTP representatives, saying they must first renounce terrorism.

During the recent clashes, DTP leaders said they understood and sympathised with the protesters. The government accused the PKK of deliberately provoking the violence.

Kaplan did not spell out what the DTP wanted Ankara to do, but in the past the party has called for more cultural and linguistic rights for the Kurds, more state help to revive the region's economy and a lowering of the threshold for parliament.

The DTP has no representatives in the Turkish parliament because it has failed to win enough votes to cross the 10 percent threshold. Its support is mainly concentrated in the southeast and is weak elsewhere across Turkey.

Turkey's Kurds have strongly backed Turkey's bid to join the European Union, which has already resulted in the lifting of some restrictions on their language and culture, but Kaplan hinted that the EU could do much more for his people.

"The EU ... made weak statements without inspecting the scene of the (recent) incidents ... The EU scored badly in this test. But unrest in Turkey, as a candidate country, should interest them," he said.