The meeting was held in Arbil and was closed to the press. The AK Party deputy reportedly asked Barzani to lend his support to the AK Party government’s plans for high standards of democracy in Turkey and the settlement of the country’s chronic problems, including the Kurdish one, through peaceful methods.
Fırat spoke to the press after the meeting and expressed Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s determination to go ahead with the democratization aspirations. “A Kurdish TV television station and a Kurdish language department have been opened so far in Turkey. A similar department will be opened in İstanbul and Ankara [universities.] The AK Party is serious and decisive on the democratization initiative. All parties, particularly Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, should lend their support to the process,” the deputy stated.
Barzani, in response, termed the AK Party efforts “significant steps,” and pledged to back them. “If we make a comparison between past Turkish governments and the current one, we see that the initiative politics carry significant results in domestic and international affairs. We do not want to experience what we did in the recent past. We will lend our support to the initiative process,” he stated.
