Turkish President Erdogan Calls HDP to Cut Ties With PKK

Turkish President Erdogan Calls HDP to Cut Ties With PKK

Basnews – The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday called on the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to sever all ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), according to Turkish Anadolu Agency.

The president argued that as a HDP is now a political party with 80 seats (80) in the Turkish parliament, it must break with the PKK, which is considered as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU.

“An offshoot that attained representation at the parliament must do its best [to cut off relations with PKK] as they apparently maintain an indirect link, even if not a direct one, with the terrorist organization,” he told the press after performing the Eid al-Fitr prayer on Friday.

Government officials and Erdoğan have regularly accused the HDP of having ties with the group and acting and speaking like its political wing.

Erdoğan said intelligence services had established that there were ties between the HDP and the PKK, which the former has categorically rejected.

The Turkish president went on to argue that certain results in the June 7th parliamentary elections proved his point.

“The pro-Kurdish party swept the polls in hundreds of villages while other parties had zero percent vote,” he said, referring to southeastern Turkey where there is an important Kurdish presence. “It means the local people there are threatened with guns.”

The Turkish government launched an initiative in early 2013 commonly known as the “solution process” to end the decades-old conflict with the PKK, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people for over 40 years.

Erdoğan said that HDP should not attempt to play politics in the next stages of the process and should reject backing from an illegal group if it truly believed in democracy and wanted to stay within the parliamentary system.

During a live interview on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also said the HDP’s alleged links to the PKK were a cause for concern and called for the pro-Kurdish party to loosen its ties to the group.