Opposition urges Turkish gov’t to continue dialogue

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has maintained that the killings of three Kurdish militants in Paris should not negatively affect the ongoing peace process in the country.

“The [Imrali] process should not be affected by this incident. If the government is determined to move this process forward then it should go ahead,” Kilicdaroglu told Ankara bureau chiefs on a flight to China early Jan. 13.

The opposition leader also stated that questioning the French president’s meetings with members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) when Turkish state institutions have begun new talks with the group is weird. “Won’t they ask you why you meet with these people? You had better think twice about your actions and your words before questioning others. You are holding meetings with them [members of the terror organization] and you ask them [French officials] why they meet,” he said.

Kilicdaroglu was referring to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s public criticism of French President Francois Hollande, who had said he knew one of the victims of the murder.

Still Kilicdaroglu joined Erdogan’s call for French officials to shed light on the incident and to arrest the perpetrators of the killings. He said the assassinations should not block the process launched by the government. The murders of the three Kurdish militants came in the first week of a peace process launched by the government in a bid to solve the Kurdish question and resolve the terror problem. The process placed the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, at the center, with two Kurdish deputies visiting him on Imrali island last week.

Calling the government to inform Parliament about the ongoing process, Kilicdaroglu said the most important thing the government lacked was the pursuit of societal consensus. “I think the members of the government have no sense of societal consensus at all.”

Kilicdaroglu denied claims that there was a crack in governmental attempts to solve the issue. “We the CHP are aware of our responsibility to solve the three-decade-old problem. There is no meaning in reacting against moves to solve this problem.”


/hurriyetdailynews.com/