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Leaders direct accusations at one another during democratic initiative talks
Indeed, Friday’s talks went much smoother than expected. At least, they were much smoother than the preliminary talks on the initiative on Tuesday. Opposition leaders Deniz Baykal of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Devlet Bahçeli of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Democratic Society Party’s (DTP) Ahmet Türk delivered their speeches in a calm and relatively quiet parliamentary session. The same applied to Ömer Çelik, who spoke for the AK Party, and then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who delivered a speech representing the government. MHP leader Bahçeli’s accusation that the AK Party was collaborating with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Baykal’s claim that the government was in cahoots with the jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, did not cause tension to rise in the General Assembly session.
The AK Party’s parliamentary group was mostly quiet. The DTP group was quiet during Bahçeli’s speech, but showed some reaction to CHP leader Baykal, who criticized the reception of 34 PKK returnees who surrendered on Oct. 19. The group’s homecoming was celebrated festively in the Southeast, and Baykal expressed his opinion that security forces should have intervened, at which point DTP Muş deputy Sırrı Sakık yelled from his seat: “You think happiness over peace is too much for us. Would you be happy if they were killed?”
However, the overall calm atmosphere in Parliament was partially interrupted when AK Party Adana deputy Ömer Çelik started his speech. A middle-aged woman and two young men sitting in the front row of spectators were taken out after shouting anti-American slogans. Çelik also had to deal with many hecklers from the opposition parties during his speech. Despite some individual dialogue between Çelik and some deputies, he was able to finish his speech without any further incident.
Prime Minister Erdoğan called for common sense and calm at the start of his speech, in which he accused the opposition of feeding unjustified age-old paranoia. He also stated that he had applied to a court regarding Bahçeli and Baykal’s accusations of collaboration between his government and the PKK. The prime minister said the democratic initiative did not seek to address the Kurdish problem alone, but also problems of all communities that are part of different ethnic or religious groups. He said all problems the country faces can be solved with more democracy and freedom.
He accused the CHP and the MHP of being afraid of the democratic initiative because the success of the democratization project would be the end of their political gains. “At the end of the initiative, exploiters will have nothing to exploit. There are those who use the funerals of martyrs for politics. There are those who want to see more martyrs die so they can shout at someone. They will not be able to use blood for their politics any longer,” he said.
After these words, the CHP rows walked out of the room. The MHP deputies stayed, but reacted with boos, to which the prime minister replied: “I am talking about those who do this. If you are not doing this, then you shouldn’t be concerned.”
CHP leader Baykal, who spoke to the press outside, said they left the General Assembly because they found the prime minister’s criticism of the opposition offensive. CHP Deputy Chairman Hakkı Süha Okay said: “We didn’t plan this. We left because we were offended.”
The prime minister said he will tour the country’s 81 provinces starting this week to inform the public about the details of the democratic initiative. Mentioning that opposition parties have been doing poorly in elections in all provinces to the north of Sivas, Erdoğan said all other parties were regional political parties. From this point onward, the government will be explaining its initiative to the people in rallies. These rallies will not only decide the future of the democratic initiative, but also the results of the general elections scheduled in 2011.
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