Clearly aware that his speech in Siirt did not enflame the audience, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan in Van played the card of creating 'suspense'. Since the morning speculations about the important things he would say in Van were around. Only to boil down to the "usual suspect". In Erdoðan tried to articulate why according to him there is no Kurdish question. "The time of assimilation - he said - is over. In the Parliament there are many Kurdish deputies". That's the evidence that assimilation is over. He actually literally said that to the dismay of many, even within his camp. Not a word about the thousands of Kurdish politicians and activists in jail because of their being Kurdish. To further distance himself from what he called "the policy of assimilation", Erdoðan played the game of "blaming the other". Pointing the finger to the CHP (Republican People's Party) the Prime Minister said: "You should be able to separate the Kurdish problem from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, problem", he said adding that the Kurdish question was created by Turkey’s second president, Ýsmet Ýnönü, and head of the CHP, some 70 years ago. “The Kurdish question is our problem,” - the Prime Minister said, reversing what he has been said so far that there is no Kurdish questions and thus confusing many. Erdoðan said the course in solving the Kurdish issue has been changed since 2002, as the AKP have ceased to ignore the existence of the problem. Outlining five documents issued by Ýnönü in the late 1940s that prohibited the use of Kurdish and ordered the confiscation of books written in the language. (Conveniently he forgot to say that many books are still being confiscated because in Kurdish and prisoners are not allowed to defend themselves in Kurdish).

“Dear residents of Van! When you were suffering this pain here in Van, we were suffering the same pains in Istanbul. This period of denial has lasted until we came to power.” he ended and by this stage people really got annoyed. The exercise the Prime Minister had been doing yesterday was to play with words, distorting them to his perusal but indeed the result was quite disappointing. With Erdoðan denying to having denied the Kurdish Question's existence and indeed ending up by denying reality. Only yesterday the Human Rights Association released a report about children detained which shows that 116 children of the 352 detained were arrested in the first quarter of 2011. They were arrested on charges of committing a crime on behalf of a criminal organization after chanting pro-PKK slogans or throwing stones at the police during street demonstrations.

Once again the response to the Prime Minister was loud and clear: well over 5,000 people gathered outside to hold their midday Friday Civil prayers at a park instead of in a mosque.

Imams in Turkey are selected and assigned by the state. The BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) has accused the government with using religion as a political tool.

Hundreds of police officers silently joined in the act of civil disobedience, held just hours before Erdoðan was set to arrive. The thousands of people who showed up for the prayer dispersed silently, without a trace of slogans or banners.