Bia news center – Istanbul
04-11-2008
Bawer ÇAKIR
Pervin Buldan, Igdir deputy for the Democratic Society Party (DTP), says they were shocked to hear such a sentence coming from the Prime Minister: "Nobody in this country has the right to kick anyone."
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s use of the expression "either love it or leave it" during his speech at Yüksekova in the province of Hakkari in the eastern Turkey has raised a lot of reactions. Buldan thinks that the reason the Prime Minister is resorting to such harsh statements is because he sees clearly that he is losing votes.
"I think that if the Kurds and Turks have been building this country since the Republic was founded, then the right to live in this country belongs to these two peoples, to all the peoples that live in this country."
Saying that they respect the flag of the country, Igdir deputy adds the following:
"We think we have the right to live in this country with our ethnic and cultural rights, without compromising from our language and culture. The Kurdish people have as many rights as the Turkish people have. I protest the Prime Minister with regret.
The Prime Minister turns a deaf ear to the developments
"Recently the people in the Kurdish geography are up and the Prime Minister makes the mistake of interpreting this as election propaganda and turns a deaf ear to the demands of the people."
"We have no worries about the election. We know the Kurdish people are behind us. The people have risen up against the bad treatment Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned leader of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), experienced in the Imrali Prison. One should see how the Prime Minister was met in Hakkari and Yüksekova. These uprisings have their reasons. That the Prime Minister is indifferent to the pressure, violence and torture against the people done in recent days shows that he discriminates between different peoples. The Prime Minister should understand this." (BÇ/TB)