The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) published on Wednesday its Declaration for a solution of the Kurdish Question.

The Declaration content was presented in Amed by HDP co-chair Pervin Buldan. Democratic Society Congress (DTK) Co-Chairman Berdan Öztürk, HDP Deputies, and others HDP executives also attended the press conference.

Buldan pointed out that the election on 24 June gives the opportunity to change the fate of the country. She said that this declaration states that national unity must be quickly achieved and she ensured that "with the HDP, an equal, free, democratic country is closer”.

After commenting on the election’s important opportunity to finally push back the AKP-MHP fascist alliance, Buldan presented the Declaration which was read by Amed deputy Feleknas Uca.

Here the main points of the declaration:

“Our Party is the best equipped, both in terms of its components and political base, to propose and be a part of the solution of the Kurdish Question. The urgency of a solution imposes a heavy historical responsibility on us to work for a solution which will also be important for the future of the peoples of Turkey.

Turning a blind eye on this question is to turn a blind eye on Turkey’s fundamental problem. The election alliances forged for the election on 24 June have also been shaped by their approach to this problem. While the AKP and the MHP have an alliance based on attacking Kurds and democracy, the other alliance [CHP lead] ignores the essence of the problem. For our part, the HDP has decided to forge a strong alliance with the social forces of peoples, democracy and peace.

Historical reasons are clearly nourishing the Kurdish question. Today, however, the cause of the stalemate is the unilateral, denialist approaches and war policies. The genetic codes of the anti-democratic system we live in today are fed by denial of the Kurdish reality.

Without solving the Kurdish Question…

Without solving the Kurdish question in Turkey, the democracy problem cannot be solved. What we have been living in the past few years proves this. Today we are seeing in the whole of Turkey emergency rule, decree laws, trustee assignments, violence against the society, arrests, impoverishment policies. Torture methods are first tried on the Kurds, then spread to the whole of Turkey. The ruling power does not solve the Kurdish question so it has an excuse to justify all kinds of violence.

HDP sees the solution of the Kurdish problem as an indispensable means to create a democratic country.

How a society will live and how it is governed depends on its own preferences which are a political and legitimate right. In this respect, the HDP accepts the claims of all other nations, especially Kurds. It defends the existence of culture, language and identity within the constitutional frame and fights against the denial or rejection of different identities. The Kurdish issue, which has been ongoing up to the present day, is a status issue. The Kurds’ demand for status is not separatism, but indispensable for social peace and co-existence.

It is the demanded, that the Kurds form their own decision-making mechanisms within the constitutive state structure. Local governance demands are one of the basic and essential demands that will solve the problem. This model is a democratic model that is applied in different parts of the world, preventing centralization and unification. The European Charter of Local Self-Government emerged from this need.

For this to happen, clearly the first priority is to change the Constitution.

Need for a Democratic Constitution

In the HDP era, a democratic constitution based on liberal secularism, pluralism, multi-lingual, multi-faith, equal citizenship, decentralized governance will be prepared with the participation of all the social groups in the country.

With the HDP, the right to freedom of thought and expression, freedom of religion and conscience, freedom of the press, right to peace, right to truth, right to union, right to strike and collective bargaining, right to conscientious objection, right to cultural identity, all rights and freedoms will be guaranteed in the democratic Constitution, which includes basic rights such as the right to a fair trial and children's rights.

The democratic constitution will defend the society against the domination of the center, against the domination of the state; focus on not centralization but decentralization.

It does not contrast with the democratic parliamentary system, on the contrary, it is a model of local democracy. The Democratic Republic based on local democracy guaranteed by the democratic constitution will secure pluralism, not authoritarianism, but democracy, not the individual but the living together.

The municipality co-mayors who were removed with the OHAL (State of Emergency) and replaced with government appointed officers will be immediately returned to their posts. Many non-governmental organizations and media in the region which were closed by the OHAL will be reopened and all assets will be returned. The judiciary will also establish measures for fair trial, as well as judicial conditions in which everyone can testify in their mother tongue, and the payment of money to interpreters in courts will end.

Ill prisoners will be released immediately. Journalists, women, politicians and students who are unjustly detained in prisons will be freed. Isolation in prisons, including the regime imposed on Abdullah Öcalan's Imrali prison, will be abolished.

Societies that do not confront their past cannot understand their present and cannot establish their future. One of the conditions of living in peace is the confrontation with the past and the quest for truth.

The State should apologise for the genocides and massacres committed against peoples and beliefs, included Kurds.

A ’Truth Commission' will be established in order to investigate the current genocides, deportations, massacres, executions. Forced displacement and forced migration is one of the greatest damages.

Right to mother tongue

For Kurds language, culture and identity are the fundamental rights of being a people. Mother tongue is a prerequisite for the acceptance and realization of identity and culture. Our party, together with the acceptance of the official language of the country defends multilingual education, multilingual life and multilingual public service in the public and civilian area. All levels of education will be provided in the mother tongue. Any policies developed against the use of the mother tongue will be eliminated.

Kurdistan is a reality

The name Kurdistan is a historical reality and is also used to describe a historical territory. We have to fight the AKP-MHP government that banned this reality.

Our Party officially advocates multiculturalism within the context of multilingualism, and every culture creates the necessary mechanisms for its development.

National Unity Expectation

In the Middle East, the existing states and forces have launched a wave of assaults that have never been so widespread against the Kurdish people and their achievements. For this reason, reaching the national unity of the Kurds is one of our most pressing problems.

The Kurdish National Unity is also necessary and inevitable in terms of democratic unity in the region.

HDP is moving towards an imaginative non-conflictive world and its struggle is to create a life without war. The HDP has shown the ineffectiveness of trying to solve the Kurdish question through violence and believes that the resolution of the problem is through negotiations. As evidenced by world experiences, any kind of conflict can be solved only through dialogue and negotiation.

Together with a real peace process it is important to have real interlocutors, with real will to solve the problem. Conflicting forces are the obvious side to engage in the solution of the problem.

Society accepted Öcalan as interlocutor

PKK Leader Abdullah Öcalan has shown that as an actor in the dialogue process carried out between 2013-2015, he is a strong interlocutor to solve the problem. Indeed he was accepted as interlocutor by society.

The end of the solution process by the AKP government stemmed from the fact that the expectations of the government were not met, not by the opposition of the society.

As a result; our party is ready to fulfill its responsibilities in resolving the Kurdish problem through democratic and peaceful means. Turkey's democratization passes through the solution of the Kurdish problem.

Honorable Peace is possible on 24 June

Peace will be not only the absence of conflicts, deaths and sufferings, but also the greatest step toward survival, goodness, coexistence. Peace struggle is democracy struggle, freedom struggle. For a free country, for the Democratic Republic, for the parliamentary system strengthened by local democracy, the most powerful step to take is peace.

The election of 24 June brings hope for a lasting and honorable peace. Those who want to pursue their policies through war, siege and the destruction will be replaced by people who are in favor of peace. June 24 is the day to begin equal citizenship in a Turkey where we can live together with our differences. We will live in peace and together with our differences. We will bring lasting peace together in a democratic country. Together with HDP, an equal, free, democratic country is getting closer.

Let's just believe and act to change this one-person regime”.