Baykal criticizes PM over his stance against Sudan

Main opposition leader Deniz Baykal has backed his party’s deputy Onur Öymen after the latter was criticized for a blunder regarding the 1938 Kurdish rebellion in the Alevi town of Dersim.

Baykal also criticized the prime minister for exploiting the issue for political purposes by recalling his approach to the incidents in Sudan. 

“[Öymen] apologized but his words are still being abused through a systematic campaign against our party,” Republican People’s Party, or CHP, leader Baykal said in an address to his party’s parliamentary group meeting Tuesday.

CHP Vice President Öymen has been severely criticized by members of his party, by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and by other segments of society after comments made two weeks ago saying the Dersim Operation in the early years of the Turkish Republic was an example for how to deal with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

In his address, Baykal recalled Erdoğan’s remarks on Sudan and accused the prime minister of abusing Öymen’s remarks for political interest. He said rebellions also took place in the provinces of Konya, Bolu and Yozgat in the past but that these incidents should not be interpreted as revolts against a sect and an ethnic-oriented identity. Baykal said the incidents took place within the social and economic circumstances of the period.

Baykal gives Sudan example 

“If these rebellions [in Konya, Bolu and Yozgat] had been sectarian incidents as Erdoğan claimed, then there would have been fierce reactions throughout Anatolia. If there had been rebellions against the Alevi faith in the past, then things would have been different,” Baykal said.

Baykal criticized Erdoğan by recalling his remarks on incidents that took place in Sudan.

“How can a person [Erdoğan] who said that the death of 300,000 people caused by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in Sudan is not a massacre, but can approach past incidents [in Turkey] in such a way?” Baykal said.