NAV-DEM (Democratic Society Centre of Kurds in Germany) Co-president Koç has condemned SPD and Green deputies for supporting the continuation of the PKK ban at Thursday evening’s debate in the German Federal Parliament.

The debate was called by the Left Party, which submitted a motion demanding the ban on the PKK introduced in 1993 be lifted. Left Party deputy Ulla Jelpke spoke during the debate, saying the ban should be lifted, but Uli Grötsch from the SPD and Irene Mihalic of the Greens spoke in support of the ban. The two deputies justified their position by citing protests by Kurds last year over Kobanê when Kurds occupied places such as airports and railway stations.

‘German police thanked us as there were no incidents’

NAV-DEM Co-president Yüksel Koç accused the SPD and the Greens of hypocrisy and said that nearly a thousand protests in 120 towns in Germany over Kobanê all passed off peacefully. “For instance, in Düsseldorf 100,000 people marched and nothing happened. The police even rang us and thanked us because the protests passed off without incident.”

'Salafists attacked the Kurds’  

Koç recalled that SPD deputy Ulli Grötsch had claimed there were clashes between Salafists and Kurds in Hamburg, whereas in reality the |Salafist had attacked the Kurds. She said that Salafists had attacked Kurds in many places.

Koç added that in conversations with individual SPD, Green and CDU deputies they had said they wished the ban on the PKK to be lifted, but when it came to the debate in parliament they had adopted a different stance, one that reflected state policy.