The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) urges the Turkish government to engage in dialogue rather than deepening the war.

The Central Executive Board of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) issued a statement on Sunday that severely criticised Turkey’s ground-and-air campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan, which was launched on 23 April.

The HDP emphasized that Iraqi Kurdistan has become a target of Turkey’s military operations since 1983.

“These operations”, it stated, “targeting the lands of the Kurdistan Regional Government have become systematic since 1983 under the name of ‘border security’. It is obvious that the cross-border operations only serve to deepen the war and clashes. Despite 38 years of inconclusive operations, the insistence on this approach continues”.

It also stated that all previous governments in Turkey “hid the humanitarian and financial costs” of the war through “manipulation. The current government insists on the same wrong approach with the cross-border operations, rather than working on building peace between countries and peoples. The real motivation of these operations, which were launched with the excuse of ‘border security’, is actually the ‘Kurdish question’ and the approach based upon insistence on a ‘conflict and security discourse’ that disregards all political options to solve this question”, the HDP noted.

The HDP also referred to the debates and discussions that have been taking place over the Central Bank, especially after it was reported that 128 billion dollars had ‘evaporated’ from the Turkish Central Bank (The sum relates to the dollars reportedly ‘sold’ by Turkey’s state banks to ‘support’ its lira currency in foreign exchange markets).

“The answer given to the ‘Where is the 128 billion dollars’ question is actually a significant confession, as the government replied: ‘Our fighter jets do not fly with zero cost’. The government”, the HDP stated, through this acknowledgement, “deepens all the crises, insisting on policies based on conflict and security”.

The HDP appealed to the Turkish government to initiate dialogue to solve the crises rather than deepening the war and it urged the national and international public to support the HDP’s efforts to promote dialogue and negotiation, based on a peaceful and democratic perspective.