I am a follower of sharia, as a Muslim: BDP deputy

ISTANBUL

Altan Tan. DHA Photo

Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) deputy Altan Tan said he was a "follower of sharia, as a Muslim" during a television program on April 22, daily Hürriyet has reported.

“I am a follower of sharia. Sharia is the Islamic law,” Tan said. “When you say that you don’t believe in the penal, commercial or civil laws of Islam, you are not a Muslim. I am a Muslim and believe in Islamic sharia,” Tan said.

He also expressed his opinion that the state should keep the "same distance" from all religions.

“Religion originally covers all of life,” he said, adding that the deliberate separation of religion and politics was nothing more than a confusion created by secular sections of society.

“In a secular state, there would be no Religious Affairs Directorate. We [as the BDP] asked for the removal of the Religious Affairs Directorate in our constitutional proposal. Religious life should be left to the public.”

'Kurds do not want national state'

Meanwhile, Tan said Kurdish people did not want a national state, stressing that a "league of states" in the Middle East was needed in which Turks, Kurds, Armenians, and Syriacs can live together with no borders.

If the final outcome at the end of the peace process is just another shade of Kemalism then it will have gotten nowhere, Tan added.