“We are going to end the order of those who established power by confining you to poverty and fear,’’ news site Duvar quoted the former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a former Turkey PM as saying during a party congress in Turkey’s Kurdish southeastern province of Diyarbakir.

The Future Party leader, who greeted the residents of the Diyarbakir in Kurdish, promised education in the Kurdish language, referring to a recent ban on theses in Kurdish in the city’s Dicle University, Ahval News Agency reported.

Davutoglu’s Future Party, a breakaway from the AKP, is seeking to capture votes from the ruling party’s support base, including Kurds, who make up some 15 percent of the country’s population.

“How is it that you are not bothered by theses being written in foreign languages in the departments of English, German and French language and literature, but the writing of a thesis in Kurdish, the pure language of this land, bothers you?’’ Davutoglu said.

The Future Party believes that education in one’s mother tongue is an integral part of maintaining social peace and a sense of belonging, he said.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has been fighting for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey for more than three decades. Some 40,000 people, most of them Kurds, arebelieved to have been killed in the conflict.

Reporter’s code: 50101