Our İzmir MP Ertuğrul Kürkçü gave a speech at the joint debate titled Europe's common fight against terrorism: successes and failures. Kürkçü stated the following:
Dear President and colleagues thank you for opening this debate through which we can convey our point of wiev of the ongoing conflict on Turkey.
Yesterday in my constituency İzmir 12 academics from İzmir 9 Eylül Universty have been suspended for signing a petition of peace in 2016. Thousands of academics were also tried for having signed this petition. And this decleration criticized the Turkish Goverment’s security operations -under the pretext of combating terrorism- and the human casulities caused by around-the-clock curfews, indiscriminate shelling of cities and districts which has already caused lives of almost 1000 civilians.
The majorty party in the Turkish parliament have lifted the immunities of our colleagues, parlamentarians, and now 12 of them are in prison for the words that they have spent in outdoor rallies -a replica of what they have said in the Turkish Parliament. Freedom of speech is penalized with imprisonement.
And yesterday Turkey’s trade and customs minister criticized the “march for justice” by the main opposition party -which is going from Ankara to İstanbul on the European Highway- by saying that “we are building up highways not for the terrorists to march but for the people to transport”.
This is an oblique way of approaching the matter of terrorism and this will not help anything. Therefore we need a clear definition of what “terrorism” is and we need the Turkish goverment to adopt a clear distinction between terrorism and insurgency. What we are witnessing in Turkey is not terrorism as such simply but a very complex issue which now have assumed violent forms.
In its decleration in 2013 Resolution No. 1925 the Assembly called the Turkish government to start negotiations with the Kurdish insurgency and find a peaceful way out. This is in our records. And I call the Assembly to stick to this position and call the Turkish government to find a peaceful way out of the Kurdish Insurgency which is causing the lives of hundreds and thousands of people since the begining in 1984 and it may stop only by finding a peaceful solution to this conflict.
29 June 2017