HDP’s Yüksekdağ: We want autonomy not only for Kurds

ANKARA

HDP co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ speaks at a parliamentary group meeting on Dec. 29, 2015, holding a copy of the identity card of Miray İnce, a three-month-old baby who was shot dead in the Cizre district of Turkey's southeastern Şırnak province. AA Photo

A recent call for self-governance supported by their party was a key to a substantial unification of Turkey’s peoples, a co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has argued, defending self-governance for the entire country, not only for southeastern Anatolia. 

HDP co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ, speaking at a parliamentary group meeting on Dec. 29, recalled that the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation on Dec. 28 over remarks by the HDP’s other co-chair, Selahattin Demirtaş, on autonomy.

“No investigation is opened when the president speaks yet our co-chairs and party fellows face investigations for defending autonomy,” Yüksekdağ said.

“Autonomy is a right. Not only for Cizre, Silopi and Nusaybin, but it is also a right for Istanbul, Rize, Mersin and Ankara too. We will go on defending this demand,” she added.

“This resistance will end with victory, and everybody will respect the people’s will. Kurds will, from now on, be the political will in their own region. During these days when a historical breaking point is emerging, our people will decide whether [to live in] a dictatorship or freedom and whether to live under one man’s tyranny or in autonomy,” Demirtaş said in a speech delivered at the opening of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) conference held in southeastern Diyarbakır over the weekend.

The DTK is a multi-party-based group that brings together a number of Kurdish groups and democratic organizations.

There is a need to highlight peace and resolution more and more, Yüksekdağ said, as the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) announced more than 200 outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants had been killed in the ongoing offensive started earlier this month in the country’s southeast.

“We have not put forth this text as an unchangeable and static text,” Yüksekdağ said, referring to a declaration embraced at the DTK conference which favored autonomy. 

“It is a dynamic text which is open to all kinds of contributions and changes. Come, let’s hold a dynamic discussion. The text which was released by the DTK and to which we agreed is the foundation of the unification of the peoples of Turkey in the 21st century,” she said.