The Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) co-chairs Tülay Hatimoğulları and Tuncer Bakırhan met with Republican People's Party (CHP) Chairman Özgür Özel in Ankara on Friday.

After the meeting, a joint press conference was held at the CHP Headquarters where the meeting took place.

Speaking here, Bakırhan stated that the CHP is the founding party of Turkey and a party with a very deep-rooted history, tradition and heritage: “Turks, Kurds and other peoples made great efforts, fought great struggles and formed an alliance in the founding of the Republic of Turkey. The 1920 Parliamentary Assembly was already diverse, reflecting this alliance. It included all the colours. The 1921 Constitution was also in line with this historical alliance. But over time, both that constituent assembly, the historical Kurdish-Turkish alliance and the inclusive understanding in the 1921 Constitution were denied and rejected. The problem has come to the present day, but no one has benefited. Both the economy and energy of the country are flowing into other channels due to the Kurdish issue that has not been resolved for a century.”

Bakırhan continued: “The CHP can play a very important role in a solution to the Kurdish issue not only by speaking and contributing, but also through its past experience and knowledge. We are sure it will. Today, we focused on how we can increase the common grounds, what we can do for the democratisation of Turkey, what we can do for the formation of a democratic ground together with the circles both in the opposition and in the social opposition. It was valuable and important. Another agenda was the appointment of trustees to municipalities. Trusteeship is slowly moving towards an administrative regime in Turkey. Previously, trustees were appointed only to DEM Party municipalities, now trustees are being appointed to CHP municipalities as well.”

Özgür Özel also spoke out against the usurpation of municipalities through the appointment of trustees by the government.

Özel said: “I express this once again; we think that a process based on transparent and sincere social consensus should be carried out, that this should be done in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, and that it should not exclude any party, any segment of society. In the construction of a social consensus, the most vulnerable segments of society should be taken into consideration.

Should the process be sincere and transparent, Turkey as one and as a whole can transform a process that it has not been able to solve for 40 years and that has cost Turkey a lot, that has caused us all a lot of pain, both morally and materially, into a social peace process with a social consensus. This would benefit everyone in Turkey. It would save Turkey from many risks in the region in which it finds itself in international relations. In this respect, nothing has changed in our stance on the first day. We want a country where everyone resident feels equal, sees themselves as equal and lives equally within this equality. We are ready to take all steps for this.

I hope that we would like to live together in a process where all political parties can establish dialogue with each other on appropriate grounds, where no one marginalizes or demonizes anyone else, and where the word has value.”