Elçi asks for rights for Kurds, same as ‘what Turkey asks for Turkish Cypriots’
Monday, December 11, 2006
The Free Kurds Group will next week submit their petition to the Interior Ministry to form a political party
DİYARBAKIR - Turkish Daily News
Bringing to mind that Ankara has insisted on having a bi-communal state on the divided island of Cyprus saying that Turkish and Greek Cypriots on the island should live in a bi-zonal state, senior ethnic Kurdish politician Şerafettin Elçi argued that Turkey should grant the same rights -- which it sought for Turkish Cypriots -- to the Kurdish people living in Turkey.
Elçi is known for his stance favoring federalism as the optimal administrative system for multiethnic countries like Turkey and as a resolution to the Kurdish issue. In July, Elçi and his Free Kurds Group announced that they were getting prepared to form a new pro-Kurdish political party.
The Free Kurds Group held the last of a serial of regional gatherings in Diyarbakır over the weekend. The group is prepared to submit a petition to the Interior Ministry next week in order to officially form a political party.
Around 1,500 people attended the gathering in Diyarbakır with some of them singing songs in Kurdish and reading poems in Kurdish.
Elçi started his speech in Kurdish and later continued in Turkish.
“What we want is extremely clear: The resolution formula for the Kurdish problem is a federative system,” Elçi said, noting that Kurds are the most crowded nation on the world which still doesn't have a state of its own.
“If we explain our rightful cause properly, then we can gain our rights and this can only happen with qualified persons taking responsibility. That's why we want to establish a political party,” he said.
“We want the rights which Turkey wants for Turkish Cypriots to be granted to the Kurds living in Turkey as well,” he added.
Elçi, who served in the pre-1980 Bülent Ecevit government as public works minister, faced prosecution after the 1980 coup because of his political statements and served a 30-month prison sentence. In the 1970s he caused a huge uproar when he said, “I have Kurdish origins” -- the first ever member of a Turkish Parliament who openly declared his Kurdish origin -- and for speaking in Kurdish to constituents from Diyarbakır who did not know Turkish.
In 1997, Elçi established the Democratic Mass Party (DKP), which was closed down by the Constitutional Court on grounds that the party program included separatist elements.
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/arti ... wsid=61427
hmmmm...maybe we should exchange links and offer some guidance to these short changed people
