Northern Kurdistan: The Co-Chair of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Selahattin Demirtash criticized the arbitrarily arrest of the 1,483 Kurdish politicians within the course of last few months. “The operations carried out against our party are continued as a political operation. Our friends and colleagues are included under false statements and forged evidence, Mr. Demirtash said”.
The first operations were carried out on 14 April 2009 in 13 different cities and resulted in the detention of a total of 40 people. Among the detainees were executives of the Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) that was closed by the Constitutional Court later on, and lawyers of the imprisoned Kurdish national leader Abdullah Ocalan. DTP had won 98 municipalities in the local election of 29th March. The government had particularly lost ground in the pre-dominantly Kurdish cities. The Turkish government could not put up with the electoral defeat and initiated a wide range of arbitrarily arrest of the Kurdish politicians.
Another ten people were arrested on 14 September, among them Diyarbakir Municipality City Council President Şeyhmus Bayhan, Bağlar Deputy Mayor Hacı Erdemir, Kayapınar Deputy Mayor Sebahattin Dinç, Büyükşehir Municipality Deputy Secretary General Hüseyin Bayrak, H. Hüseyin Ebem from the DTP Headquarters, former President of the Provincial Assembly Kerem Duruk, Chairman of the Assembly of the Democratic Society Congress Alaatin Aktaş and the director of the DTP Headquarters.
On the DTP party congress in September 2009, more than 100 members and executives were behind bars. A further 22 members of the Confederation of Trade Unions of Public Employees (KESK) that had been detained in the end of May were released in November.
More than 80 people were detained in the course of operations carried out in eleven different cities in December. Criticism had been voiced in the media when 35 people had been shown queuing up hand-cuffed in front of the courthouse. Among them were Diyarbakır Sur District Mayor Abdullah Demirbaş, Hatip Dicle as spokesman of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) and former Democratic Party (DEP) MP and Muharrem Erbey, Deputy President of the Diyarbakır Branch of the Human Rights Association (İHD).
The Kurdish politicians are detained for their alleged links with the Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK). The Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK) was founded in 1973 as the result of the continuous and systematic oppressions and the denial of the Kurdish nation by the occupying powers of Kurdistan. The PKK took up arm in 1984 since all the possible political and diplomatic means applied for 11 years in between 1973-84 proved exhausted. The PKK however declared its first unilateral ceasefire in 1993 since it believed the arm struggle hit its targets. Since 1993 to date the PKK has declared unilateral ceasefires in 6 different occasions and called upon Ankara to solve the Kurdish problem in a peaceful democratic procedure.
Despite the facts that the PKK has declared 6 unilateral ceasefires and also it sent peace groups in two different occasions yet the PKK is considered as a ‘terrorist’ organization by Ankara and the US. It also continues to be on the blacklist in EU despite the court ruling, which overturned the decision to place the Kurdish freedom movement on the EU’s terror list.
“By labelling PKK as a terrorist organisation, the EU and the US are giving the Turkey a green light to target its civilians. They give the Turkish government a free hand to do what it will, a mother of Kurdish martyr said”.
It should be noted that after 1954, apart from the Korean war, 1949-52 and the invasion of Cyprus, 1974, the Turkish Army operations have continued to be exclusively against the Kurds.