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DTP’s Türk: Turkey’s Kurds don’t want a Kurdish state
Zaman-Turkey's fears that the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq could stir up separatism among its own Kurds are unfounded, the leader of Turkey's main pro-Kurdish political party said on Friday.
On a visit to Washington this week, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül reaffirmed Ankara's opposition to a Kurdish state on its eastern border. Gül also urged US troops to crack down on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) members hiding in northern Iraq.
"We want the Kurds of northern Iraq to live well and in peace. But we don't want to join them in a Kurdish state," said Ahmet Türk, leader of the Democratic Society Party (DTP).
"There are 20 million Kurds here in Turkey. Our home is here, we want to build a more free and open society here. No Turkish Kurds want to go to Iraq. And after all, the Kurds of northern Iraq need Turkey," he told Reuters in an interview.
A majority of Turkey's Kurds, generally estimated to number 12-15 million, live in the poor Southeast region bordering Iraq, Syria and Iran, though İstanbul and İzmir in western Turkey are also home to big Kurdish populations.
Many analysts say any future Kurdish state in Iraq would be heavily dependent on Ankara because its trade routes and energy pipelines to the West would have to cross Turkish territory.
"Having a Kurdish neighbor would boost Turkey's role and influence in the Middle East region," Türk said.
Ankara fears Iraq's Kurds plan to seize control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as a prelude to declaring full independence from Baghdad. Kirkuk's fate is due to be decided in a referendum later this year.
Rising nationalism
Türk said he was worried about an increasingly nationalistic mood in Turkey ahead of elections due by November.
"This mood harms both Turks and Kurds. This is a difficult period. We all have to show greater sensitivity," he said.
Turkey was rocked last month by the murder of Turkish Armenian editor Hrant Dink by a teenage nationalist gunman.
Like Dink and other intellectuals who have challenged Turkish nationalist taboos, Türk said he and his party have also received death threats and abuse by mail and via the Internet. Turkish nationalists view the DTP as a mouthpiece for the PKK.
Türk criticized a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights upholding Turkey's threshold of 10 percent for parties seeking to enter the Ankara Parliament.
"This threshold, the highest in the world, seems designed to keep us Kurds out of Parliament," said Türk.
The DTP won about 6 percent of the national vote -- representing nearly 2 million people -- in the last general election in 2002 but won no seats. In Diyarbakır, largest city of the Southeast, the DTP won more than 50 percent of the vote.
"The threshold should be lowered for the sake of peace. We want proper representation. ... We want to take the gun out of politics," said Türk.