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By Alakbar Raufoglu for Southeast European Times:
The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) held its first parliamentary group meeting last week in Diyarbakir — the main city of the Kurdish-dominated region – and challenged the government to release their detained members and make major changes towards Kurdish rights in the constitution.
Unless the government steps back from its position, the BDP parliamentary group says they will convene in Diyarbakir every week and continue to make politics under the umbrella of a Kurdistan Meclis (parliament).
BDP MP Sirri Sakik describes the alternative parliament to SETimes.
“We have promised our [Kurdish] voters to raise their voice in the democratic parliament in Ankara, but in fact, the government spoilt this process from the very beginning,” he says, adding that now all democracy seekers in Turkey, including Kurds, need their own local parliaments more than ever.
“We called our [Meclis] project an overall Turkey project … From Trabzon to Diyarbakir, from west to east, our people should taste the democracy starting at their own meclis, and the Kurdistan Meclis will be the first pilot of it,” he added.
The main goal of the project is to disperse the government’s power from Ankara to the regions, he said.
Michael Gunter, a political science professor at Tennessee Technological University and author of nine books about the Kurds, analysed the situation for SETimes.
“I believe the idea of Kurdistan parliament is simply being floated to encourage the Turkish authorities to rule favorably upon seating Hatip Dicle in the Turkish parliament,” he says, referring to one of the banned BDP candidates.
“Any Kurdistan parliament would have to be approved by a new Turkish constitution which would have to establish a strong federalism.”
In other words, he says, the idea of the Kurdistan parliament at this stage is not realistic, but does illustrate how serious the matter of seating Dicle in the Turkish parliament is for the BDP and its many supporters.
Paul Kubicek, a professor of political science at Oakland University and expert on Turkish politics, says the possibility of a Kurdish “alternative” parliament is “very alarming and destabilizing”.
“Regardless of whether one thinks the BDP has some legitimacy in boycotting the new parliament, for the Kurdish deputies to take this step, which will clearly be seen as separatist in orientation, is highly provocative and raises the stakes in the situation,” he told SETimes.
In Ankara, authorities are infuriated by the Kurdistan Meclis idea and rule out any possibility of such.
“We will not allow anyone to take such steps that aim to shatter Turkey’s administrative system,” says Huseyin Tanriverdi, the AKP’s deputy general-secretary responsible for local administration.
“The Kurdistan Meclis or any other separatist parliament like that is not acceptable by our people,” he told SETimes.
“In every Turkish city where Kurds live, there are also Turks, and vice versa,” he argues. “The discrimination of the governance system is unacceptable in Turkey.”
Meanwhile, former AKP MP from Diyarbakir, Abdurrahman Kurt, sees logic in the local meclis proposal.
“Both local administrations and the parliament are important for Turkish regions as well as Diyarbakir, but it shouldn’t be obsessed with the Kurdish problem or can’t be called a Kurdistan Meclis,” he told SETimes.
“Local parliaments should be dealing with local issues,” he says, whereas national politics should be dealt with in Ankara.
