HDP: Divisions hindering Turkey's solution process

ANKARA 

Divisions between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish government are hampering efforts to reach agreement on the solution process with the outlawed PKK, the pro-Kurdish HDP party has claimed.

Speaking to reporters after a Parliamentary session on Thursday, three lawmakers from the Pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, Sirri Sureyya Onder, Pervin Buldan and Idris Baluken said the ruling government needed to repeat its commitment to making a deal with Kurdish groups.

Onder said: “The Turkish President disagrees with the government” over the solution process, which the Turkish government launched in early 2013 in a bid to end the decades-old conflict with the outlawed Kurdish workers' party, or PKK, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people over about 40 years.

He said the two sides were "divided into many pieces" over the process.

'Declaration needed'

Onder also said that if the government met again with delegations from the HDP and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, they should determine Ocalan’s status within a legal framework and the government needs to declare it publicly.

Turkish Deputy PM Yalcin Akdogan and Interior Minister Efkan Ala met HDP leaders officially for the first time - including the party’s deputy chairs Pervin Buldan and Idris Baluken, and Istanbul lawmaker Sirri Sureyya Onder - at the Prime Ministry’s office in Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul on Feb. 28.

Both sides agreed to a solution process based on 10 “basic principles” that would constitute the framework of a possible permanent accord.

Onder said the ruling government should restate in public that it continues to recognize the principles, even at the risk of losing some nationalist electors’ votes ahead of the general elections on June 7.