KCK Member Says AK Party Minister Begged For End To October Protests

Mustafa Karasu, a senior leader of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), told a news agency that a Justice and Development Party (AK Party) minister talked to pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) members to ask them to stop the deadly Kurdish protests for Kobani, carried out from Oct. 6-8, as the minister said the party felt for the first time that they may lose the government.

In remarks carried by the pro-Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) Firat news agency (ANF) on Friday, Karasu revealed that the AK Party minister implored that the protests be conducted peacefully as he promised that government would take the necessary steps with regard to Kobani. Karasu blamed the AK Party government for the Kobani siege by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants. According to Karasu, as soon as the protests cooled down the AK Party blamed the HDP and PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in order to regain its political control.

Between Oct. 6-8, thousands of PKK sympathizers took to the streets to protest the government's unwillingness to militarily help the Kurdish militants defending the Syrian town of Ayn al-Arab (Kobani) on the Turkish border against ISIL. Around 50 people were killed after the protests turned violent, a significant number of them by protesters themselves.

Murat Karayılan: We will start arrests too

In another story carried by Firat, Murat Karayılan, one of the leaders of the outlawed militant PKK, said they will start “arrests” too if the detentions and arrests against PKK members don't stop.

Speaking on the occasion of the 36th anniversary of the establishment of the PKK, Karayılan said if the AK Party government is sincere about a democratic settlement process, it should not expect constructive steps only from the Kurdish side. Asking the AK Party government to stop police pressure on the Kurdish people, Karayılan stated that they will respond in the same way as the police if the arrests continue. Arrests of PKK sympathizers by the police in Kurdish towns are against the nature of the settlement process, Karayılan added.

The settlement process was launched by the government in late 2012 to solve the longstanding Kurdish issue by holding talks with Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)