Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday vowed to rid Turkey of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), calling the country’s third largest party in parliament the “puppet’’ of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The Turkish leader made the remarks in a speech he delivered in southeastern Kurdish-majority Batman province, where is inaugurating several sites, T24 news site reported.
“We have saved our country and the inhabitants of the region from the armed conspiracy of the PKK,’’ Erdoğan said. “I hope that we will do the same with the HDP, the puppet of the PKK.’’
Turkey’s second-largest opposition party, the HDP, is accused by Ankara of being a centre of activity for the PKK, an armed group that has been partner to an internal conflict with the Turkish state since the 1980s. The party denies the charges.
The group is facing a closure case over terror links, while Ankara has implemented a years-long crackdown on the party, in which thousands of its members have been tried on mainly terrorism-related charges. Several of the HDP’s leading figures, including former co-chair and presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş, are currently imprisoned on terror charges.
“The terrorist organization (the PKK) has stubbornly chosen violence, thus proving that it no longer has any link with the inhabitants living on these lands,” Erdoğan said on Sunday, as he accused the PKK of ruining the Kurdish peace process.
Then-Prime Minister Erdoğan initiated the Kurdish peace process between Turkey’s intelligence service and the PKK leadership in 2009.
The talks failed in July 2015 as relations between the two sides came under pressure due to the Syrian conflict and domestic politics. An intensified conflict ensued, causing hundreds of civilian deaths, forced migrations and the demolition of town centres in southeast Turkey.
The initiative was ruined after the PKK “chose arms and blood shed,’’ the Turkish president said, despite his government’s ‘’sincere efforts which began taking into account every kind of risk’’ over process.
