ANKARA
Turkey's prime minister has called on his country's Kurdish citizens to declare opposition to PKK terrorism which cost thousands of lives in the past three decades.
"We are expecting our Kurdish brethren to raise a brave voice and strongly say 'No' to terror. We want to draw a road map again with our Kurdish brothers and sisters and enrich brotherhood in this country together with them," Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Sunday a congress of his Justice and Development (AK) Party in Ankara, the Turkish capital.
Erdogan said his government had taken "hundreds of bold steps" towards the Turkey's Kurds, "and now I appeal to our Kurdish brothers: We expect them to take a step at us."
Erdogan said the AK Party government had made investments worth of 35 quadrillion Turkish liras in Turkey's east and southeast within the last decade, ended denial and assimilation policies and lifted barriers on the Kurdish language.
"And today we want to open a clean slate and fill it together with our Kurdish brothers. We want to keep it from violence and to make it a clean slate of peace and brotherhood," Erdogan said.
PKK, which is recognized as a terrorist organization also by the United States and the European Union, has recently stepped up attacks on Turkish security forces.
The terrorist organization has been fighting an armed separatist movement since 1984 which has claimed the lives of more than 30,000 people.
IMF debt to be cleared by April
Erdogan has said Turkey will clear its remaining debt to the International Monetary Fund by April 2013.
"At the present we owe a total of $1.3 billion to IMF. And we will cut it to zero by next April,"
Erdogan said his government had taken over $23.5 billion of debt when the AK Party came to power in 2002, adding Turkey would lend IMF $5 billion.
Erdogan said Turkey's public net debt stock was 61.5 percent in 2002, and that the government had reduced the figure to 22 percent, adding that the country's GDP rose to $774 billion in 2011 from $230 billion in 2002.
The Turkish premier said Turkey's average annual growth rate increased to 5.3 percent between 2003 and 2011 from 3 percent between the years of 1993 and 2002.
Erdogan said Turkey's exports hit a record high in 2011 to reach $135 billion, adding that the figure in 2002 was only $36 billion.
