Despite stalemate in the Kurdish peace process and warnings of fighting with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has said the Government will persist with the negotiations.
However, Davutoğlu told MPs of his ruling Justice and Development (AKP) that the Government will “not allow any effort to disrupt the public order”:
I am once again calling out: our government’s will on the resolution process is solid and firm. No one should doubt this.
However, our will to protect public order for the success of the resolution process is equally solid and firm. If agreed on these issues, all actors doing their best are our interlocutors.
In the end, we have managed to walk all these difficult paths together.
The Prime minister urged the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the main pro-Kurdish opposition party, to adopt “peaceful, democratic policies” and to “stop violent acts” if it wants to continue workking with the government for a resolution: “Our determination will continue. But if their expectation is to create a de facto situation by undermining public order in the east [of the country] while continuing the peace process, we will never allow this.”
Davutoğlu accused the HDP of responsibility for at least 38 deaths during protests last month over the Kurdish talks and over the Government’s failure to defend the Syrian Kurdish center of Kobane against the Islamic State: “They are making calls to the government as if they have no role in any of this vandalism, this pressure, and this brutality that was committed under the cover of Kobane.”
(Featured Photo: AFP)