Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç speaks during parliamentary budget talks on Dec. 21, 2011. (Photo: AA)
22 December 2011 / TODAY'S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL
Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç has said Turkey will recognize all cultural and constitutional rights of Kurds.
During parliamentary budget talks on Wednesday night, Arınç responded to earlier remarks by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) parliamentary group deputy chairman Mehmet Şandır, who said that “recognizing the Kurdish identity is beyond blindness.”
"The issue of recognizing the Kurdish identity is a very important matter. This is a human rights issue. I assume that your chairman [MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli] and the chairman of the [main opposition] Republican People's Party [CHP] also agree on this. I mean, when a person living in Turkey says ‘I am a Kurd and I am proud of this identity. I want you to recognize me with this reality,' we have to respect and accept this,” Arınç said.
Noting that Kurds may have been exposed to policies of denial and assimilation in the past, which has been the cause of many of today's troubles in Turkey, Arınç said all ethnic identities in Turkey, including the Kurdish identity, should be recognized. “We have to respect all of them and we have to realize that they possess inalienable human rights. The Kurdish identity, or the Kurdish issue, is not something that emerged three, 20 or 30 years ago. Kurds have been around for at least 1,000 years. You cannot deny this,” Arınç said.
Turkey's Kurds have long complained about being deprived of their fundamental cultural rights. Speaking Kurdish was banned in Turkey until 1991. Prodded by the European Union, which has been pressing Turkey to address the rights of Kurds, the country has allowed private language schools to teach Kurdish and some Kurdish-language radio and TV stations to operate. As part of efforts to boost the rights of the country's Kurds, the government launched a 24-hour state-run Kurdish television station in 2009.
During his speech, Arınç recalled that Şerafettin Elçi, now a deputy for the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), spent two-and-a-half years in prison after he said he was a Kurd in the early 1980s. “Do you want the country to return to those days? Denying one's identity is denying that person. Everyone in these lands, those who define themselves by a Kurdish or another identity, will be free to say that. We will respect that identity. We will recognize and grant all the cultural and constitutional rights of that identity,” Arınç concluded.
An immediate response to Arınç came from MHP leader Bahçeli, who branded Arınç's speech as “grossly unfortunate.” “If the opinions of the deputy prime minister overlap with those of the government, there is one thing the government has to do. It will halt the [Kurdistan Communities Union] KCK operations and counterterrorism operations in the Southeast and will do whatever the BDP and the [terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party] PKK want through Arınç,” Bahçeli said.
Turkish police have recently carried out a series of operations against the KCK, which prosecutors say is an umbrella political organization for the PKK. Turkish security forces have also stepped up military operations against PKK bases in the country's Southeast, killing dozens of terrorists and arresting others in the past few months.
BDP says words mean nothing, expects action
The BDP was also critical of Arınç's remarks, with the party's deputy chairwoman saying such words mean nothing to Kurds unless concrete action is taken to boost the rights of Kurds.
“If Turkey gives up the politics of denial, which we have been criticizing for years, this should have some legal cover,” Gülten Kışanak said on Thursday. Noting that Arınç's remarks are correct, Kışanak said, however, that she has doubts over his sincerity.
“If you were going to recognize the Kurdish identity, what is the reason for this oppression? Thousands of politicians are in jail just because they said these things,” she said, referring to the recent KCK operations.
“People's rights should be granted legal guarantee. Otherwise, the politics of denial would go on,” she said.
Kışanak said there is no legal document in Turkey that recognizes the Kurds.
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-266399-deputy-pm-says-all-rights-of-kurds-will-be-recognized.html
. Trust me he is a fascist as any other Turkish officials when it comes to Kurds .
