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The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which gathered at the party’s caucus in Ankara’s Kızılcahaman district over the weekend, reiterated its determination to continue with its democratic initiative, which aims to resolve Turkey’s long-standing Kurdish problem.
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Speaking there, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said cowardliness would not help Turkey deal with its age-old problems. He asked: “If Orhan Gazi were afraid, would Bursa have been established? If Fatih [Sultan Mehmet] were afraid, would İstanbul have been?” and said his party would go on with its democratization push without fear. “You can’t build a country on fear. You can’t build a future on fear. You can’t build democracy on fear,” he said. The prime minister said they saw their fight for democracy not as a problem of the AK Party but as a problem of the country, drawing widespread appreciation for his party’s courage and quest for democracy. Bugün’s Adem Yavuz Arslan thinks the Kızılcahamam meeting was very significant for the AK Party as deputies and ministers had the chance to speak with their party leader and conveyed their views to him personally. “It is possible to say this was a democratic initiative meeting, not only a gathering for the Kurdish initiative. The deputies exchanged views on a wide array of issues from the Alevi issue to minorities,” says Arslan. Considering the fact that the opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), seem very likely to block the government’s moves for initiatives aimed at expanding the scope of freedoms for all groups in the country, he says the government is left with no choice other than relying on the nation for the initiatives. “The government would either give up all the initiatives or it would walk alone. When I speak to the influential figures in the AK Party, they say they make these initiatives by relying on the nation. In this regard, the weekend meeting was important. The AK Party deputies whose concerns have been eased and who have been motivated will go out in the field, reach citizens and inform them about the government’s initiatives,” explains Arslan, noting that the initiatives will speed up after this meeting. Looking at the content of Erdoğan’s speech delivered in Kızılcahaman, Radikal’s İsmet Berkan says if he had not been afraid of neighborhood pressure, he would say the AK Party has become center-left from center-right, confirming the remarks of Professor Sencer Divitçioğlu, who says: “The left in Turkey is actually right, while the right in Turkey is actually left.” Berkan states that while defending democracy, freedoms and minority rights is the work of leftist parties in the world, this is done by the AK Party in Turkey, which is considered to be a hard-line right-wing party by some.
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| 24 November 2009, Tuesday |
| FATMA DİŞLİ ZIBAK |
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