Zekeriya Yapicioglu, head of an Islamic Kurdish party in Turkey known as HUDA-PAR believes that both Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are to blame for the current violence in the country, saying the PKK is responsible for bringing the war into the cities, condemning meanwhile the heavy-handed military response. Yapicioglu who was born in Batman in 1966 and worked as a lawyer for two decades before founding the party, says HUDA-PAR respects Turkey and Kurdistan alike and considers itself more Kurdish than other Kurdish groups in Turkey including the HDP. In this interview with Rudaw, Yapicioglu says that the peace process failed because the Turkish government made the mistake of ignoring other Kurdish parties like his own and put all the focus on the PKK. Rudaw: What’s your view on the current situation and causes of the confrontations in Northern Kurdistan? Zekeriya Yapicioglu: The serious question now is: was the military operations an outcome of the trenches in the cities or were the trenches a reaction to the military operations? This is something people in North Kurdistan are dealing and unhappy with. I believe if there were no trenches and if the guerrillas had not taken pictures with their guns behind sandbags to spread on social media networks there would not have been such intense military operations and wouldn’t have entered the cities. On the other hand, if the PKK has brought the war to the cities, this does not mean the military should have the right to employ heavy weapons. Both sides must be held accountable for the civilian deaths because they both have a part in creating this crisis. I think the PKK did deliberately bring the war into the cities to draw the army into an urban war. Before this happened, there were no army or police bases in the Sur district of Diyarbakir (Amed). During the June elections the state did not have any forces present here. On the contrary the PKK had many armed groups and yet the army did not go after them. Who do the ordinary people there blame for what is happening? People were anxious about digging trenches, sandbag barriers and drawing the military into the city. Some people believe that the state is carrying out a genocide against the Kurds in the name of fighting the PKK, and many others think it was all the PKK who caused this by bringing the war into the cities. The PKK had even something bigger in mind than what is happening now. Even during the peace process it continued to arm its members and trained them on how to confront the army. The state even knew that 80,000 guns had been handed out to the PKK members and cells. They invited people to fight the government but people did not respond and turned their backs. Do you think that the peace process will ever resume? The state made some mistakes in the peace process. It insisted on disarmament which was wrong. We told the state that the Kurds did not mean the PKK alone and that there were other groups and opinions, but they only kept addressing the PKK which led to this day. If the government had dealt and talked with the other layers of the Kurdish community this would not have happened. In addition, the government did not in the beginning have a clear plan to solve the Kurdish issue. We warned them that the process will fail half way and face troubles. We suggested to the state that it would pursue two negotiating tables simultaneously. One to tackle PKK disarmament and one to seek a solution to the Kurdish question. Representatives of the Kurds from all groups and walks of life would then be consulted and participate in the talks, we suggested. Then the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) would be told to go to the first table if they wanted to only talk the PKK and the second negotiating table if they were seeking a solution to the Kurdish question. Give them the freedom to choose. But all in all it is wrong to keep the HDP out of this. What is your party’s view on the HDP? The HDP is not a Kurdish party. Look at HDP, BDP and DTK, none of them has the word Kurdistan in it. HDP says it is working for a democratic Turkey and a progressive socialist system. Their words are one thing and their stance something else. Sometimes they speak exactly like a Turkish party. Other times they are a just a party defending the PKK. But we are a fully Kurdish party. We are an Islamic and a Kurdish party at the same time. The founders of our party are all Kurds and only one vice president is a Turk. If we can, we will remove all the borders and form a big Kurdistan. You put the PKK outside the picture of Kurdish nationalism and solutions, but in your own party conventions there is no Kurdistan flag either. Our convention was about our party and we thought it best to only show the party flag. But inside our offices there is our party flag and the Kurdish flag. Some believe that that flag only represents the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and not all of Kurdistan, but we don’t see it that way. We aren’t against the Kurdish flag or the Turkish flag either. What we don’t like is that they call it the flag of the Turks. Or the army of the Turk. Or the law of the Turk and so son. But in your party convention there was the Palestinian flag. I did not see that flag and I cannot say there wasn’t one. But that is not our party policy and has not been. So, it means you consider yourselves a nationalist party? The question of the PKK and it being nationalist or not is something that needs pondering. The PKK is in itself an obstacle to nationalism. As Islam is an all-inclusive program, so are communism and socialism.
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