“Kemal Kilicdaroglu's Diyarbakir visit was an attempt to torch the search for a ceasefire and peace of the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers, who met at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum led by Turkey. … The CHP leader is the bearer of instability and cruel ambition,” Bahceli tweeted on Thursday.
Bahceli added that it was “people who plot the continuation of both global animosity and regional conflict” who tasked Kilicdaroglu with this act of “unrest” while the country was hosting a “historic meeting.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, met on the sidelines of a diplomatic forum in Antalya on Thursday, joined by Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
Kuleba expressed frustration about the talks later on, saying that “no progress” had been achieved on even a 24-hour ceasefire.
Kilicdaroglu had visited Diyarbakir the same day as the talks, pledging to bring peace to the country at any cost by resolving the long-standing Kurdish issue, a term prevalent in Turkey’s public discourse that refers to the demand for equal rights by the country’s Kurdish population and their struggle for recognition.
The CHP leader’s visit came after he said in late January that real democracy can only be established in the country by settling the Kurdish issue.
“If democracy is to be [really] established in this country … the way to do it is through Diyarbakir,” Kilicdaroglu had said, signaling new efforts to settle the country’s long-standing problem.
Referring to Kilicdaroglu's plans to visit the mother of imprisoned Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas –- the former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) –- while he was in Diyarbakir, Bahceli also asked him whether he had plans to visit the family of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), too.
Turkish authorities had conducted direct talks with Ocalan for over two years until the summer of 2015, when the death of two police officers near the Syrian border became the official reason for their collapse.
Since then, there have been continuing clashes between the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU, and Turkish security forces. More than 40,000 people, including 5,500 security force members, have been killed in four decades of fighting between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Both President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the far-right MHP, portray the HDP, the second-largest opposition group in parliament, as the political front of the PKK. The party denies links to the PKK and says it is working to achieve a peaceful solution to Turkey’s Kurdish issue.
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