ANKARA
Turkey's President Abdullah Gul said on Wednesday that the government and state had not launched the peace process out of a sense of exhaustion following an increase in terrorist activities. On the contrary, they initiated the process because they believed in what they were doing, he said in a live TV interview on private broadcaster CNN Turk.
Gul stressed a lot of mistakes were made in the past regarding the Kurdish issue, most of them due to "lack of democracy".
Among prior mistakes conflicted with Turkey's moral conscience Gul gave the example of the usage of minorities' mother tongues in southeastern Turkey. "When I grew up in Kayseri -central province of Turkey- I didn't seen anyone speaking Kurdish. But in Diyarbakir, everyone was speaking Kurdish. How could I deny this? If I deny it that would mean I have a moral problem," added Gul.
President Gul said violence and terrorism would not contribute to any progress in the Kurdish issue, adding that no state would bend head to any kind of threat or terrorism. Gul said he believed that most of the problems stemming from the Kurdish issue would end soon as the government had launched a new peace initiative.
-Presidential election in 2014-
On a question about his intention to run for president in 2014 election, Gul said he had not made a decision yet. He said he would make a decision based on the developments.
With regard to the presidential form of government, President Gul stated that the democratic characteristics of a system were more important than the type of system. Gul noted that if the parliamentary Constitutional Reconciliation Commission decided to create a presidential form of government, it would be within its rights to do so.
Gul declined to make an outright choice between a presidential system or another form of government, underlining that he was keen to look at the main principles of a system before delivering a judgment, when asked about his preference.
"When we raised a concern about the parliamentary form of government, we pointed to its deficiencies. There are things that we identify as systems of tutelage. There were government-like bodies along with the elected government. These types of problems must cease to exist," Gul said.
Responding to a question on the freedom of the press, Gul acknowledged that the long detention periods of a certain number of some journalists shadowed the investigations.
