“My remarks about the chief of General Staff neither mean nor contain an insult. … What I said meant that comments by a chief of General Staff on the Kurdish people's right to receive an education in their mother tongue carry the weight of comments made by a corporal,” Demirtaş said on Wednesday as he responded to questions from reporters in Diyarbakır.
Commenting on Özel's interview with a daily last week in which the military chief said he is opposed to the use of Kurdish in public education, Demirtaş said: “Even if your rank is general, you are a corporal in our eyes. Your value is just that. It does not matter for us whether a general or a corporal is speaking. You have no value in our eyes.”
The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) announced on Monday that they had initiated legal action against the BDP leader.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also lashed out at Demirtaş for his remarks about Gen. Özel on Tuesday. “Targeting and -- so to say -- insulting our chief of General Staff with the purpose of swearing at this nation and these lands is, quite frankly, tactless. Being a corporal, let alone being a general, is a source of pride and honor in this country,” Erdoğan said during a party meeting.
In response to Erdoğan, Demirtaş said he should be targeting the military chief for expressing opinions on political issues rather than target the BDP. “The chief of General Staff cannot announce whether the Kurdish people will be able to receive education in Kurdish or not at a time when efforts to make a new constitution have intensified. The prime minister should turn to the chief of General Staff he appointed and tell him that he has no right to influence the constitution-making process rather than shouting at the BDP,” Demirtaş said.
Recalling that former senior military officers have recently been jailed for intervening in politics, Demirtaş argued that Gen. Özel is also doing the same thing. “The prosecutors are accusing former chiefs of General Staff and hundreds of generals of being chief terrorist heads and nobody cares, but you are bothered when I say corporal,” he continued.
