The two day “Northern Kurdistan Conference for Solution and Unity” has opened in the main Kurdish city Amed on Saturday. The conference has been organized as a part of the four conferences Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan suggested should take place in the ongoing process in search of a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish question.

The final resolution of the conference will be prepared in line with the decisions to be made tomorrow evening. It is being attended by 250 delegates from four parts of Kurdistan as well as BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Gültan Kışanak, DTK (Democratic Society Congress) co-chairs Ahmet Türk and Aysel Tuğluk, chairpersons of KADEP (Participatory Democracy Party (KADEP) and ÖSP (Party for Freedom and Socialism), Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir, sociologist-author İsmail Beşikçi, BDP mayors, politicians, intellectuals, Roboski families and representatives of NGOs.

Speakers of the conference, Osman Baydemir, Ahmet Türk, Sinan Çiftyürek (ÖSP leader) all put emphasis on the importance of the conference for the establishment of peace and national unity.

BDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş pointed out that “It is the government's basic responsibility to pave the way for democratic politics. The government will have no reasonable grounds in the event of a single obstacle to the ways of democratic politics in the current process which is witnessing the silence of arms and the withdrawal of PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) guerrillas from the Turkish territory”.

Demirtaş said the government must do its part in the formation of a pluralist constitution, recognize the Kurdish identity, remove the obstacles to the use of mother tongue, recognize the cultural rights of Kurds and all other peoples, remove the legal obstacles to democratic politics and pave the way for the representation of all political circles in the parliament.

Demirtaş pointed out that the conference was of great importance for representing the will of Kurdistan and being the major political mechanism to determine the stance to be displayed in the solution process.

Kurdish people's leader Abdullah Öcalan has also sent a message to the conference that put emphasis on the importance of national democratic unity which -he said- was the single assurance of Kurds.

Remarking that the Kurdish struggle for the creation of a common future has reached a significant phase, Öcalan said “No power will any longer consider itself to have the right to deny our identity, language and culture”.

The Kurdish leader noted that it is now possible than ever to establish an alliance of peoples and a new future on the basis of people's power and true laws. He said the first phase of the process aimed at democratic politics has been completed, and remarked that the major responsibility in the second phase will belong to the components of the conference. “The Turkish state and the government do no doubt have major duties to fulfill in the next phase, such as opening the door to democratic politics, ending all kinds of open and unseen repression of politics and guaranteeing democratic politics through legal and constitutional assurances. These are a must for the process to record a healthy progress. However, the basic responsibility and duty will be that of our own power, i.e. our people. No step will be secure unless it is taken on the basis of our own power. This is a truth history has proved thousands of times. I am paving the way for the negotiation process but it is you who will lead the way to it”, said Öcalan and underlined that the government must on the other hand enable his meeting with the components of the conference, the outside world, the people and his comrades.

Öcalan said the conference components should basically handle the questions over the laws that Kurdish people will be living with in future, ways for the protection and improvement of the Kurdish language and culture and the relations Kurds will establish with the Turkish state and other countries.

He remarked that the decisions to be made at the conference will also guide the negotiation process in which -he underlined- he will not make decisions himself in an anti-democratic way.

Jailed deputies of the BDP, Hatip Dicle, Kemal Aktaş, İbrahim Ayhan, Selma Irmak, Faysal Sarıyıldız and Gülser Yıldırım, also sent a message to the conference laying stress on the importance of achievement of national unity.

In his message for the conference, author Yaşar Kemal called on Turkish and Kurdish peoples to unite in order to protect the honour and cultural richness of the country.

The conference is continuing close to the press.