Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris

n° 272 • November 2007 Information and liaison bulletin • 7 •
may result in the banning of the
party. The request filed with the
Constitutional Court was against
the DTP, founded in 2005 on the
ashes of the DEHAP, another of a
series of pro-Kurdish parties dissolved
the Courts. The Court of
Appeals Public Prosecutor, Abdurrahman
Yalçinkaya, affirmed that
“the party has become the seat of activities
harmful to the independence of
the State and its indivisible unity”.
The prosecutor also demands that
the organisation’s leaders be
banned from any political activity
for five years. One DTP member of
Parliament, Sabhat Tuncel, is at
present on trial — despite his parliamentary
immunity — “on presumption
of support for the PKK”
while the media are making capital
over the news that the husband of
one of the DTP’s Kurdish women
M.P.s, Fatma Kurtulan, is said to
have joined the PKK in the 1990s.
On 7 November, the Minister of
Justice, Ali Sahin, had pointed out
that “public opinion thinks that they
(the DTP) have links” with the PKK
and affirmed that the organisation
might be banned. “If they insist on
serving the PKK’s objectives in the
political field (…) then they will suffer
the consequences”, Mr. Sahin had
warned. The nationalist M.P.s
recently demanded the lifting of
the parliamentary immunity of
their DTP colleagues but Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
had opposed this. In a televised
speech made to a meeting of his
Justice and Development Party
(AKP) at Kizilcahamam, near
Ankara, on 24 November Turkey’s
Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan considered that the
improvements in the Kurds’ democratic
rights will diminish support
for separatism and put an end to
the PKK. He pointed out that his
country had reached a “critical
stage” in its struggle against the
PKK and that the Kurdish fighters
were “besieged on all sides” thanks
to international support. “A climate
of freedom is the enemy of violence and
terrorism”, added the Prime Minister.
“Let us thus maintain democratic
pluralism and strengthen the climate
of freedom so as to secure a decisive
result in the struggle against terrorism”,
Mr. Erdogan further stated.
“Let us seek, together, the means of
winning the population instead of
alienating it”, he proposed.
During a Congress in Ankara on 8
November, the DTP strongly
opposed the government’s “militarist”
policy and its threats of
cross-border military operations
against Iraqi Kurdistan. This second
DTP Congress, surrounded by
the strictest security measures,
elected Nurettin Demirtas to the
head of the party. It was held
against the background of Turkish
threats of intervention into Iraqi
Kurdistan, where a few thousand
PKK fighters have dug themselves
in. In a speech made a few hours
before his election to the party
leadership, Nurettin Demirtas stated
that: “the AKP’s militarist policy
is unacceptable. (…) Instead of spending
time and energy on cross-border
operations, let us spend them on establishing
peace in the interior”. Mr.
Demirtas, who was jailed in his
youth for “separatism” was loudly
applauded for his remarks made
before a hall full of several hundreds
of activists. The delegates,
who arrived from all four corners
of Turkey, welcomed the “insufficient”
reforms but, on the other
hand, were very critical of the
operations against Iraqi Kurdistan.
In 2005, Turkey began difficult
negotiations for membership of the
European Union, after carrying out
a wide programme of democratic
reforms, in particular regarding
the Kurdish population. “There
have been 20 military incursions in
the past and they have not put an end
to the PKK’s existence. Why launch
another one?” stressed Abdullah
Ayham, a delegate from Iskenderun,
the ancient city of Antioch.
Regarding the proceedings started
against it, the DTP denounced
them as an attack on democracy.
Sirri Sakik, a Member of Parliament
and an influential figure in
the DTP, declared that: “this is a
backward step for democracy as well as
for membership of the European
Union”. “Turkey has become a graveyard
of banned political parties. Closing
down a political organisation does
not resolve the problem”, added Mr.
Sakik. The DTP is the successor of
a whole lineage of banned pro-
Kurdish parties, of which the best
known abroad is the Democratic
Party (DEP). Four DEP Members of