"Party Leader" Erdoğan Finally to Meet Kurdish MPs

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will meet with a delegation from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) tomorrow (5 August) at noon.

Not as Prime Minister...

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has emphasised that he will attend the meeting in his capacity of AKP party chair and parliamentary group chair and not as Prime Minister.

The meeting will take place in parliament, in the office of the AKP's party chair.

The meeting will also be attended by Minister of the Interior Beşir Atalay, who is coordinating the government's recently-announced Kurdish initiative, DTP co-chairs Ahmet Türk and Emine Ayna, as well as DTP deputy parliamentary group leaders Selahattin Demirtaş and Fatma Kurtulan.

Türk today met with the AKP's candidate for speaker of parliament, Mehmet Ali Şahin, who asked for the DTP's support. He later told journalists, "We will try to express the people's expectations. If we insist on too much, we will be obstructing the process, but if we start with ready-made projects, the same will happen. We need to put forward formulas for success."

Long awaited...

In the past, the DTP has asked Erdoğan for meetings, but never received any replies. In June, Erdoğan said on TV that he had gone back on a plan to finally meet with them after seeing the news of soldiers being killed.

Türk had replied to this, "Yes, but is that not exactly why we want to have a meeting? We wanted to meet so that the fighting would end and our young people would not die anymore." (TK/AG)