kirkuki
Member
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey -- A survey carried out in the Kurdish areas of Turkey shows that more than 81 percent of residents demand a political entity for the Kurds, and 92 percent demand education in their mother tongue.
SAMER Company took the survey in 11 Kurdish cities among them Diyarbakir, Agri, Betlis, Merdin, Sirnax and Dersim.
Lawyer Mehmet Emin Aktar, a legal consultant with SAMER, told Rudaw that the reason for the survey was that the question of a Kurdish entity keeps coming up.
“When talks are held about the Kurdish issue, there is always the same question at the negotiation table: What do the Kurds want? With this survey, we wanted to find out what the Kurdish people want.”
In the Kurdish regions of Turkey the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), has the majority of the Kurdish vote. The Rights and Freedom Party (HAK-PAR) and the Participatory Democracy Party (KADEP) come second and third.
The HAK-PAR and KADEP--two legal Kurdish parties in Turkey also demand federalism for solving the Kurdish issue.
“We wanted to have participants from these cities due to their demographics,” Aktar said. “In the aforementioned cities, Kurds, Arabs, and Turks reside, as well as followers of Shafii Islam, Alavi, Hanafi and Issawi. Therefore, we wanted to take a comprehensive sample of all the communities residing in this area.”
Aktar says that the findings of this survey shows that Kurds in Turkey want changes to their current political and cultural situation.
“They want the Turkish administrative system to be changed. Some of them demand autonomy, federalism and independence. Others demand a strong decentralized regional administration. However, 80 percent of the Kurds demand an official Kurdish entity,” Aktar says.
Not only supporters of the BDP demand independence for the Kurds, but also Kurdish supporters of the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) have the same ambitions.
According to Aktar more than 60 percent of AKP’s Kurdish voters want some sort of autonomy from Ankara. As regards BDP, almost 96 percent of its supporters demand an official entity for the Kurds.
“The result of this survey might not be what the AKP and BDP want to hear, but this is the demand of the people,” Aktar says. “We will be happy if more surveys are taken, because if more surveys are taken then no one can deny that most Kurds demand an official status.”
Aktar believes that AKP has managed to win huge numbers of Kurdish votes the area has a large population of conservative Muslims.
“The votes go to the AKP because the BDP is seen as a leftist party,” he says. “That is why some of the Kurds do not vote for the BDP and give their votes to the AKP.”
A conservative Kurdish party in Turkey demanding Kurdish language education and official status for the Kurds, Aktar believes, could reduce the votes of the AKP.
“Or, if the BDP opened up to religious leaders and gave them posts, that could also reduce the votes of the AKP and increase their own,” he says.
After its past several years’ success in parliamentary elections, AKP has taken steps to maintain and ensure more votes in the Kurdish areas. The party opened a Kurdish TV channel (TRT6), allowed Kurdish language courses and opened a number of Kurdish language colleges in Turkish universities.
The AKP also announced the “democratic initiation program” to solve Kurdish issues and has had secret talks with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but over the past two years it has also started arresting Kurdish activists and BDP leaders under the pretext of ties with the PKK.
“People are discontent with AKP’s behavior,” Aktar says. “Even some AKP MPs have told people that AKP’s approach is not the right approach. They have said they are hurt by what the AKP is doing.”
http://www.rudaw.net/english/news/turkey/4793.html
Last edited:
