Turkey set out plans on Friday to expand the rights of its Kurdish population, including the creation of an independent body to investigate cases of torture and the loosening of restrictions on the Kurdish language.
The government reform initiative is seen as boosting Turkey’s hopes of EU membership and stopping a conflict in which more than 40,000 people have died, but in a show of the resistance the reform process faces in parliament, the main opposition party walked out of the chamber on Friday after Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused opponents of not wanting an end to the conflict.
The initiative builds on steps which Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted government has already taken to expand cultural rights for Kurds, such as the launch of a state-run Kurdish language television channel.
Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay told parliament: “An independent anti-discrimination commission will be established and a bill related to this will be sent to parliament.”
The commission would aim to prevent torture and mistreatment.
Atalay said Turkey needs a new, libertarian constitution as the existing one does not meet Turkey’s needs. The AK Party also plans to allow Kurdish to be used during political campaigning.
“The steps that will allow political parties to address the people in different languages and dialects used by citizens during election campaigns are among these,” Atalay said, adding Turkey would remain a unitary state.
Kurdish-majority towns would officially be able to regain their old Kurdish names, which were replaced by Turkish names.
The reform is designed to encourage the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrilla group to disband. Kurds have long complained of discrimination at the hands of the state.
The PKK, branded a terrorist group by Ankara, Washington and the EU, launched an armed campaign in 1984 with the goal of creating an ethnic homeland for Kurds in Turkey’s southeast.
The chairman of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), which has long been accused of having links to the PKK, said the Turkish state needed a change of mentality.
“If the proposed solutions are serious, weapons can be laid down in three months,” DTP Chairman Ahmet Turk said.
Opposition leader Deniz Baykal, who has said the reforms threaten to undermine Turkey’s unity, accused Erdogan of preparing a “plan to destroy and split Turkey.”
Erdogan then answered: “There are some people who want martyrs [dead Turkish soldiers] so they can exploit it better,” prompting a walkout by Baykal and his lawmakers.
Timothy Ash, emerging markets analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland, said Erdogan’s Kurdish strategy was high risk.
“While pushing the Kurdish reform agenda might win it votes amongst Kurds and in southeast Turkey, it also threatens to lose it votes amongst its own core Turkish vote, and more generally amongst secular voters,” Ash wrote in a research note.
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