MP Sebahat Tuncel in British Parliament

MP Sebahat Tuncel was one of the speakers in a meeting which was held in in the British Parliament, House of Commons, in London on Monday the 17th December 2007. The meeting was hosted by MP Simon Hughes.

Sebahat Tuncel told that DTP is calling Turkey to stop its attacks against Kurds in North Iraq.
”Kurds are not demanding anything special, only the right to use their own language. They want to have education and mass media in Kurdish”, she told. DTP wants also more power to the local authorities.

Sebahat Tuncel was elected last summer to Turkish Parliament by 300 000 votes from Istanbul. This is the biggest amount of votes any candidate has got in parliamentary elections during the history of the republic of Turkey. Ms. Tuncel believes also Turks have voted her.

MP Simon Hughes expressed many times during his speech that now it is time to look for practical steps to achieve peace.

”There must be cultural and linguistic diversity, it is the word of the day”, said Mr. Hughes who visited Turkey October 2007.

Lawyer Mark Muller said that Turkey’s biggest problem is that it has not been able to move towards democracy. Kurdish issue is only one reflection of this.

”There has been a belief for example in the EU that economical reforms in the Southeast and some changes in the constitution would solve the problems. But now we know that this is not the case”, he said.

Professor Michael M. Günter was thinking the same way when he explained that solving Kurdish question would open road to full democratization in Turkey.

His experience from Diyarbakir was that despite PKK is labelled as a terrorist organization it is difficult to find Kurds who want to criticize it.

Journalist Jonathan Fryer pointed out that Turkey is denying its multicultural roots.

There were many interesting points in public discussion. Some one said AKP got so many votes during last elections because it opposed military and the war in North Iraq. But if there would be elections now, it would not got so many votes in the Southeast.

Some one else complained that Turkish generals visit US and EU as if they were politicians. This must change, military must stay away from politics!

Pictures: on the top: Big Ben in Westminster, London, in the Christmas lights. The meeting was hold in Committee Room 6 in the House of Commons. In the middle the chairman of the meeting, MP Simon Hughes. MP Sebahat Tuncel sits next to him. Pictures: Kristiina Koivunen

This was a good meeting, especially because of the practical attitude of Simon Hughes. Now is is time to think how the war could be avoided, we have heard hundreads of times what the problems are.

It would benefit also the Turks if there would be more autonomy for the local authorities. It is needed as well in Western Turkey as in Southeast Turkey.

Final resolutions of EUTCC conference which was held in Brussels at the beginning of December 2007 describe the main issues of peace and political solution for the Kurdish question in Turkey.

EUTCC Conference in Brussels: Turkey must put its promises into action!

The European Parliament in Brussels.

Leyla Zana.

Some days ago, the 3.-4. December, there was an important conference about the future of the Kurds. It was arranged by a NGO, EU Turkey Civic Commission. The conference was held in the European Parliament in Brussels.

This conference was a forum for discussion. It reflected the atmosphere in Kurdistan and feelings of the Kurds. And how is the Kurdish atmosphere now? Courageous and optimistic. Recent news from Turkey show that common awareness is increasing about the Kurdish question. More and more Turkish people understand that this problem is endemic source for instability in Turkey and a solution must be found.

This conference was arranged for the fourth time, but for me it was the first time I attended it. The people who had been there earlier said this was the best of the four EUTCC conferences.
Turkish Kurds run now a campaign called "Edi bes e" - It is enough! These words describe well the atmosphere of the conference. One of the speakers, Dutch green MEP Joost Lagendijk, put it this way: "Now the situation is that EU criticises and Turkey promises to make changes but in practise nothing happens." This must change! This demand was repeated by speaker after each other, for example by Leyla Zana, Ahmet Türk, Akin Birdal and Nurettin Demirtas.

It depends on the political development during the next five months whether there will be war or peace. British lawyer Mark Muller talked about the need for a new way of thinking. "In peace negotiations it is question about what helps, not about what is right or wrong", he explained. Muller did not believe that there would be any purely political or military solution to the problem. A twin approach is needed because there are many military and geopolitical aspects.

Mr Muller spoke about the historical responsibility of his country Britain. He said also that Britain has lots of knowledge in peace processes due its experience of creating peace in North Ireland.

Like many other speakers, Mark Muller wanted EU to be more active in demanding change in Turkey. Some other speakers demanded EU to make time table for Turkey in the democracy process.

Next year will be the fifth anniversary of EU Turkey Civic Commission and it already plans a big new conference. There are many ideas for it, for example that there should be participants also from South Kurdistan, despite the topic will be the Turkish part of Kurdistan. There were some Iranian Kurds already in the conference of 2007. One of them was psychiatrist Kamal H. Artin, who come to Brussels from California, American west coast. He was critical on Nurettin Demirtas who demanded democratic autonomy. Artin wants the Kurdish target to be an independent state.

Kamal H. Artin had sat twenty hours in aeroplane travelling to Brussels. The next day after the conference he returned to California. "It was boring to travel so long time but it was worth of it to get the opportunity to say my opinion", he told.

Mark Muller and Joost Lagendijk.

Ahmet Türk and Nurettin Demirtas.

Rewbar Fatah and Kamal H. Artin.

Akin Birdal.

Akin Birdal, Dogu Ergil and Ahmet Türk.

Pictures: Kristiina Koivunen.

Fourth International Conference on EU, Turkey and the Kurds

Ahmet Türk, I and Nurettin Demirtas.

Greetings from Brussel where the fourth International Conference on EU, Turkey and the Kurds is just over. It was held in the European Parliament.

This is my favourite picture from it, despite the light is not enough.

I write more about the conference when I get back to Finland. Now I write with a computer that has French system and it is very slowly to write.