Pro-Kurdish Party Proposes Establishing Kurdish Regional Government in Turkey

TURKEY, DYARBAKIR: Osman Baydemir, the Mayor of the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in Turkey proposed establishing a regional Kurdish government similar to Iraq’s federal region of Kurdistan, according to the news reports.

The pro-Kurdish Firat News Agency (ANF) reported yesterday that the pro-Kurdish Party of Peace and Democracy (BDP) had demanded Turkey to grant the Kurds a semiautonomous local government in the Southeast of Turkey as it was revealed by Baydemir.

“Marmara and the Eastern and Western regions of the Black Sea will have its own government. There will be the Kurdistan Parliament as well. The red-white-yellow-green flag of the Kurdish nation will wave next to the flag of Turkey,” Baydemir outlined his party’s proposal.

He said that the proposal had come as a result of the failure of the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s so-called “Kurdish opening.”

The project of the ruling government led by the Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AK) party does not mean much for the Kurds, said Baydemir.

The call for a regional government followed after an interview of the PKK leader Murat Karayilan with BBC, proposing to disarm his group in return for more political and cultural rights.

“If the Turkish state does not accept this solution, then we will declare democratic confederalism independently,” Karayilan said . The BDP’s proposal also comes at one of the tensest periods in Turkey. In addition to an ongoing confrontation between with the pro-Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has thus far reportedly claimed the lives of 80 Turkish soldiers as well as dozens of PKK guerrillas, Turkey has been facing riots erupted by the Kurds in the Southeast part of Turkey.

Turkey have reportedly arrested dozens of children, under eighteen, accused of being terrorists, yet in some cases their only crime was to have attended a demonstration, chanted a pro-PKK slogan or thrown a stone, reported the New York Times two days ago.

The proposal of Baydemir will probably stir a heated debate in Turkey similar to what Kenan Evren, Turkey’s seventh president, proposed in 2007 suggesting to a Turkish newspaper that Turkey decentralize power into eight administrative states.

Turkey has always been bitterly opposed to Kurdish political rights fearing that it will end up in Kurdish statehood jeopardize the integrity and Turkishness of the state.

By WLADIMIR VAN WILGENBURG

Source: Rudaw