People's Democratic Congress (HDK) Executive Board member Hatice Altınışık, Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) Leader Figen Yüksekdağ and Socialist Democracy Party (SDP) Chairperson Rıdvan Turan spoke to ANF about the democratic resolution process in search of a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question.

HDK member Hatice Altınışık remarked that the government has so far failed to take steps in response to the determination the Kurdish side has displayed since the beginning of the resolution process. Altınışık called on the government to stop evading responsibility for the advancement of the process and to take urgent steps to meet primary demands such as the release of ill prisoners.

Altınışık, voicing concerns over the course of the process, said that the government should form negotiation mechanisms at international standards to ensure the transparency of the process and to avoid a deadlock. According to Altınışık, Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan should also be released so that he can act together with his team for the negotiation of all demands.

Speaking after, ESP Leader Figen Yüksekdağ pointed out that the AKP government has yet to make a promising move as few days are left to the World Peace Day, September 1. "They are talking about a democracy package but there is already a strong opinion that this package doesn't meet the basic demands of the Kurdish people", she said and criticized the democracy package for proposing amendments to allow the use of headscarf in public sphere and not answering other basic democratic demands such as mother tongue education, reduction of the election threshold, abolishment of the military and village guard systems and practice the amendment of the Turkish penal code and the anti-terror law. "This shows the fact that AKP has created its own democracy and prepared this package for itself", she underlined and remarked that the ongoing imprisonment of thousands of Kurdish politicians, revolutionaries and socialists also constituted a serious obstacle to the solution of the Kurdish question.

Yüksekdağ said they had no hopes nor expectations from the democracy package of the government and warned that the maintenance of AKP's present attitude towards the process would mean the re-enhancement of the war environment in Kurdistan and Turkey.

"September 1 will be a day of the rise of peoples' resistance against war and the government's deadlock policies", she said and remarked that the Gezi Park resistance and Kurdish people's demand for peace and solution would unite on September 1, witnessing the meeting of Gezi and Lice, Taksim and Rojava.

SDP leader Rıdvan Turan called on the government to announce its so-called "democracy package" to the public, remarking that the package would have a remarkable role in determining the course of the process.

Turan remarked that Kurdish leader Öcalan's conditions also needed to be improved to make sure that the process can make headway.

Turan said the AKP government construed the resolution process as a technical issue and regarded it as a move to gain time before the general elections to take place in March. "Now that the government has failed at its foreign politics as well as at Gezi protests in the internal politics, its primary objective is to pass the electoral process without any problems", he underlined and added that the government will take no steps before the elections with the concern that it will lose votes.

Turan urged the ruling government to take immediate steps in order to come up with a solution to the most important problem of the country and to avoid a deadlock in the ongoing resolution process.

He also called on all social circles, HDK in particular, to enhance their demand for peace and the fight for freedom for the achievement of democracy in the country.