PM expresses doubts over real perpetrators behind PKK attack

Speaking yesterday to journalists on a plane to Turkey from Mexico, where he visited government officials, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said investigators were still looking into the details of the Tokat attack. “It is not right to take it as a fact that the PKK did it just because it claimed responsibility. True, this or that branch of the terrorist organization might have been behind it. But is this the truth of it?” He noted that a renegade branch of the PKK had claimed responsibility and not its central command. He said it was too early to jump to conclusions before officials complete their investigation.

Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç also expressed similar doubts yesterday. Speaking to journalists before a visit to the Kayseri Governor's Office, he said the terror attack in Tokat had been claimed by a group of the PKK that referred to itself as the “Dersimians,” adding that it was staged as an independently, not upon an order from the PKK's central decision-making mechanism. He said the callous attack had torn the hearts of every member of the nation.

“We all want the bloodshed and tears to end. We want peace to come to Turkey. We don't want to bury our martyrs anymore. We want to see terror end completely in this country,” he said. Like the prime minister, he said an investigation into the Tokat incident was already in progress.

“Who did it and why will be clarified only after the perpetrators are captured. Is there a special meaning for choosing the Reşadiye district of [the predominantly Turkish] Tokat for this attack? We’ll find out at the end of the investigation. This region has been an area where many terrorist groups other than the PKK have been active. We will know who did it when the investigation is over.”

On the plane yesterday, the prime minister also spoke about recent complaints raised by the PKK and the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) about the conditions of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan’s imprisonment. He said the prison on the island of İmralı where Öcalan is serving a life sentence has better conditions than most of Turkey’s F-Type prisons. “It is completely in line with EU standards, even better. Its pictures have been published in the press.

They said his window was near his ceiling, and you saw that this is not true. He now has the opportunity to see other inmates for not more than 10 hours a week.” He said the government was satisfied with the work carried out by the Justice Ministry to improve the conditions of Öcalan’s imprisonment.

In his conversation with journalists, he also criticized opposition parties that disapprove of the government’s Kurdish initiative, referred to as “the democratic initiative” by government officials. He said both the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have been firmly opposed to the initiative from the start, expressing his opinion that these two parties had no desire for the bloodshed to end. He also criticized the DTP, which initially supported the initiative, but later said it would not in protest of Öcalan’s allegedly poor prison conditions. The DTP was angered when the size of Öcalan’s cell was reduced. The Justice Ministry says with the change, his cell has been refurbished and the reduction in the room’s size has been minimal.

Erdoğan accused the MHP and CHP of using dead soldiers as an instrument for their own political gains. He said this approach was “ugly.” He also accused the two parties of not proposing or making any contributions to or constructive criticism of the Kurdish initiative process. He said reversing the process in reaction to terrorist attacks and violent street demonstrations of PKK supporters across the country in the past week was unthinkable. “If we did such a thing, we would serve separatist terror. We would also fall to the mentality of the CHP and MHP. We would never fall into such a trap or give in to such trickery.”

In response to a question about a possible meeting to be organized by the president that would bring leaders of all political parties together to talk about the Kurdish question, Erdoğan said: “Such a meeting may be organized. But our president has done this before. Not only did [these meetings] yield no results, they also featured very inappropriate behavior directed at our president. Of course, it is up to Mr. President to decide. I would not say no to such an invitation from Mr. President. But I don’t believe it would yield any positive results.”

He also said the government will travel to every corner of the country to explain the details of the Kurdish initiative, noting the party was busy compiling parliamentary speeches on the Kurdish initiative as well as brochures and booklets. He also said they expected to see support from the media. “We have two options,” he said. “One is that terror continues. Or, we establish brotherhood. Either one or the other.”

Erdoğan also responded to questions on the Council of State’s rejection of an appeal by the Higher Education Council (YÖK) to eliminate the use of a lower coefficient when calculating university admission test scores of graduates of vocational and religious imam-hatip schools, leaving them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their fellow university applicants. He said the Council of State would not be forgiven by the people for turning hundreds of thousands of young people into victims.

In response to a question on news stories reporting that prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya had asked for records held by the Telecommunications Administration (TİB) of those phone lines that were legally wiretapped, he said this could not be possible without a court decision. “TİB has its own confidentiality rules. You can’t just call them and think you can get whatever you want.”