Selahattin Demirtas, co-president of the HDP and Eyyup Doru, representative of the HDP in Europe met Elmar Brok, German member of the European Parliament for the European People’s Party and current Chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs and President of the Union of the European Federalists (UEF) at the EP this morning.
Selahattin Demirtas started his speech by responding to the resentment of Elmar Brok’s introduction about the pessimistic situation in Europe which has been according to him surrounded by fire in recent month while it was surrounded by many friends before, and said that the situation was not that dark nor that hopeless, stressing that kurds were still positive and they knew peace was on its way even political leaders were trying to postpone it.
He also said Erdogan received too much attention and that Turkey should have already taken a key role as a leading actor in Syria but decided, rather than finding a solution to the issue, to create problems and even to worsen the situation because of its fear of the Syrian kurds, who lead Turkey into paranoia because more than 20 millions kurds live in south-eastern Turkey.
Had Turkey not contributed so badly with its insane calculations about Syria, the refugee related questions could have already been dealt with said Demirtas.
Selahattin also said that he found that Mogherini’s last statement in Ankara was positively formulated and that this kind of call should be repeated by european leaders, adding that Europe should make more honest consistent calls to retain the AKPS’s murderous policies.
He said his party was also supporting the accession negociations of Turkey in the EU and stressed the fact that actually there were huge violations of Human rights in the kurdish cities of Turkey and Europe didn’t raise its voice, adding that he was expecting the European Union to send delegations of all groups to the field to witness the situation. He said reports were coming straight from the field to european institutions but they still decided to remain silent.
As the third party in the Turkish parliament, Demirtas said they were ready to put their efforts for the resolution of the conflict in Syria and to resolve the refugees crisis and will then take all the move of the government to improve the situation. He also attracted the attention of Mr. Brok at the conference of Geneve, where kurds are denied participation, saying that there will be no peace possible in Syria without the contribution of the PYD.
Elmar Brok said for his part that a leadership mecanism was missing in Ankara and that they had the occasion to witness resumption of peace talks with Öcalan but that talks collapsed because of Erdogan’s wish for a presidential system. He mentioned, beside the Syrian refugee crisis, that another emerging crisis was due to the displaced people inside Turkey as a result of the war carried out by the AKP. He said that without a coherent frame of action inside the country people will never stay and will flee, so it is urgent to cooperate with Turkey.
Selahattin finished by answering that his party was for a European-Turkish cooperation but that Europe should stop turning a blind eye because of those issues and said in Syria those violations were even worse. He finished saying that democracy was going to win in Turkey.
Selahattin Demirtas met Elmar Brok at the European parliament
