Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will meet independent Kurdish lawmaker Leyla Zana on June thirty to talk over the Kurdish issue, 2 days after the National Security Council (MGK) told terrorist act wouldn’t hold commonsense attempts to resolve the Kurdish question.
“Terror actions won’t be able to counteract commonsense steps to be taken to establish social peace and dissolve the Kurdish question,” the MGK stated in a announcement published after a June 28 assembling.
Zana, a representative figure in the Kurdish movement and an independent deputy from Diyarbakır, stated that Erdoğan could resolve the Kurdish issue and that she had never lost her hopes that he would do so. She called for a meeting with Erdoğan after her comments were welcomed by high-level officials from the ruling party.
Zana was elected as a deputy in the 2012 elections from the bloc supported by the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), but she can’t become a party member till 2014 due to a political ban against her. In 2009 the Constitutional Court banned the BDP’s predecessor, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), and the party’s founders, including Zana, from participating in politics for 5 years.
The BDP was cool to Zana’s comments, with party co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş telling it was unquestioning to hope the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) would be able to resolve the Kurdish issue. He later told it was senseless to anticipate an intraparty argumentation with the BDP, praising Zana as “invaluable.”
Zana’s meeting with Erdoğan has still aroused eyebrows inside the BDP. Demirtaş stated the expected meeting wasn’t with party consent, while one anonymous party senior told, “She had said ‘Weapons are insurance policy for Kurds, and at present she sings Erdoğan’s praises, what has altered within a few months?”
Alluding to Zana’s comments, Erdoğan speculated that there could be a breakup within the BDP, but the party played down Erdoğan’s speculation as “hopeful thinking.”