AGRI, Turkey
The assassination of three PKK members in Paris last year, the Gezi protests and the December 17 anti-graft operations are among events in Turkey that are interlinked and target the Kurdish 'solution process', said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan on his local election rally in the Turkish eastern city of Agri highlighted the events that target the 'solution process' in which Turkey launched talks with imprisoned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan boosting public hopes for an end to the almost 30-year-long conflict which cost more than 40,000 lives.
"Oslo talks were leaked," Erdogan said referring to Turkish intelligence's contact with senior PKK figures, first publicised in 2011, after a recording revealed the series of meetings, known as the 'Oslo talks' in the Norwegian capital between 2009 and 2011 to settle the decades-long armed conflict.
"Three women PKK members were killed in Paris; the Gezi protests were organized and attempts to recently topple the government with the December 17 anti-graft operations - all these events are linked and are targeted to break the solution process," said Erdogan.
He pledged that his Justice and Development (AK) Party government will endeavor to resolve all issues in Turkey through a political solution and he said that the AK Party government initiated the solution process with the Kurdish insurgent PKK which has seen a year-long halt so far of the bloody conflict between the PKK terrorists and the Turkish armed forces.
"We have abolished all meaningless bans on the Kurdish language; we have state-run TV broadcasting in Kurdish, and our culture ministry has published prominent Kurdish literary pieces in Turkish and Kurdish," added Erdogan.
"We will build a new, united Turkey: PM Erdogan"
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday said that ten years ago guns were blazing in the east of Turkey, but today people in the region enjoy the fruits from investments the government carried out.
Erdogan, at the local elections rally in Turkey's eastern city Mus, noted that this was the 25th meeting that he held in Mus during his eleven years of office.
He also underlined the government's effort in the solution process of the Kurdish issue and said that his Justice and Development (AK) Party opened the gate for education in Kurdish dialects in schools.
"We are trying to build a new Turkey in which all ethnic and religious groups, Alewite, Sunni, Turks and Kurds, are united," Erdogan said.
Slamming the December 17 anti-graft operations against the AK Party government, Erdogan in reference to the US based scholar Fethullah Gulen and the opposition in Turkey said: "Those who plotted the December 17 operations enjoyed the idea that government would be toppled but their joy lasted only for one day then they saw that the government could not be toppled by fabricated recordings or wiretappings."
englishnews@aa.com.tr
