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Postponed Kurdish conference likely to be held in March
The DTP's co-chairpersons Ahmet Türk and Emine Ayna, deputies Sevahir Bayındır and Sebahat Tuncel, Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir and former deputy Hatip Dicle paid a visit to northern Iraq last week and met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. During the visit, the DTP delegation informed Kurdish officials about the government's democratization initiative, a yet-to-be shaped plan to solve the decades-old Kurdish question in Turkey. The details of the plan will be clear at the beginning of October after Parliament reopens. Meanwhile, the DTP will hold its party congress on Oct. 4. According to Kurdish sources, a delegation from the DTP will pay another visit to the northern Iraq after these two developments in order to talk about the details of the Kurdish conference.
Conference aims to unify Kurds
If the conference can be held, it will be organized under the auspices of the Kurdish regional administration with the participation of Kurds from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey and Europe in order to create a road map for a solution to the Kurdish problem in Turkey. Presumably, the conference would produce suggestions for several measures to be taken by both Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and it would monitor the implementation of these measures.
Last year in December during a previous visit by the DTP to northern Iraq, the idea of organizing an international conference emerged. The initial aim of the conference was to gather all the Kurdish groups in the region as well as diaspora Kurds.
According to initial plans, this conference would urge the PKK to lay down its arms and would call on the Turkish government to take some steps to solve the problem. The conference was supposed to monitor this process, but it could not be held due to many disagreements among the Kurds.
Barzani supported the idea of the Kurdish conference and even the Iraqi president, Talabani, claimed that it would be held in northern Iraq last April or May with the participation of various Kurdish groups, but it never took place.
The DTP at that time suggested that the outlawed PKK should be one of the participants in the conference. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the European Union.
Some of the other possible participants were hesitant about inviting the PKK to the conference, claiming that the PKK itself is one of the topics of the conference. The PKK dragged its feet at the time and established preconditions for the conference. PKK-affiliated publishing and broadcasting agencies had claimed that the organization wanted to be present at the conference, a demand not welcomed by Iraqi Kurds.
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