Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2013-02-06-Speech-3-499-000"
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"en.20130206.35.3-499-000"2
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"Mr President, the Kurdish-Turkish conflict is now the only major insurgency taking place within a member or candidate state of the European Union. After almost 30 years of tragic bloodshed, the deaths of many thousands of civilians as well as combatants and the displacement of an estimated three million Kurds, actions must now be taken to ensure that no more lives are lost and that all the people in Turkey, regardless of their culture or ethnicity, are accorded full human rights enshrined in law.
Although I support Turkey’s development and welcome it as an economic and social partner, we cannot deny that the country’s human rights record has been questionable over the years, particularly with regard to minorities. The Kurdish population of Turkey has been culturally and institutionally alienated. Although the Turkish state has introduced some positive measures in recent years, the Kurdish language remains subject to restrictions as a language of instruction in schools, and organisations promoting the Kurdish minority have also been heavily discouraged. There are also worrying allegations that Turkey has relocated Kurds to different parts of the country in order to dilute the culture and the perceived military threat.
As a modern democracy, Turkey must now permit the Kurds to exercise their full cultural and linguistic identity within the existing borders of the Turkish state. Certainly my group accepts that encouraging a separate Kurdish state would pose a very real risk of destabilising the region further, drawing in Iraq, Syria and Iran and fermenting further conflict.
The Kurdish population also has a part to play. The Kurdish paramilitary organisation, PKK, must now fully renounce all violence and engage in meaningful, peaceful talks with Turkey without preconditions. In this I welcome the moves to involve Abdullah Öcalan. Even from prison as a convicted criminal, his influence cannot be underestimated. As with so many other conflicts, then, it is often necessary to negotiate with one’s worst enemy – we have experience in the United Kingdom in Northern Ireland with the IRA, the Spanish with the Basque terrorists and so on – in order to achieve a shared goal of peace.
Finally, I too utterly condemn the brutal murder of the three PKK activists in their Paris office last month. The perpetrators must be brought to justice and not be permitted to derail the fragile peace negotiations between the Kurdish population and the Turkish Government."@en1
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