Eyyup Doru – Athens visit

The HDP Europe representative Eyyup Doru was invited to Athens the 21st and the 22nd of October as part of a conference organized by the Economics Faculty of Athens’s University in which many political representatives were present. Mr. Doru concentrated his speech on Turkey’s coming elections and the Kurdish question, insisting on the fundamental dimension of a bilateral cease-fire for safe elections. He called therefore the leading government’s party to join the recently announced ceasefire by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in order to ensure the security of the coming elections. He also recalled that an opportunity to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue had been missed when, in last February, the President of the PKK Abdullah Öcalan and government bodies had agreed on the 10 points proposed by the Kurdish leader. An agreement was then formalized through a joint press conference with members of the HDP and the AKP, but the agreement was quickly disrupted by President Erdogan who opted for a resumption of an all-out war against the Kurds rather than continuing on the path of peace. It was then that began, according to Mr Doru, the deadly cycle of violence with attacks against various HDP’s offices across the country, and that continued tragically with the deadly attacks of Amed, Suruç and Ankara, which resulted in the death of 139 people, whose perpetrators acted closely with the government in power, noting also that no one had been charged for those crimes until now. Mr. Doru also denounced the daily assault of police and military that killed at least 120 civilians since June in Kurdish cities.