MHP leader likens Kurdish settlement roadmap to Treaty of Sèvres, says marks collapse of Turkish Republic
Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahçeli has drawn a parallel between the Treaty of Sèvres, which the Allied powers imposed on the Ottoman government and was to create a Kurdish state in Anatolia, with a recent agreement between the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the government made in order to solve the Kurdish problem, saying the agreement is a “treasonous text” that will lead to the “collapse of the Turkish Republic,” Today’s Zaman reports.
A delegation representing the government and the HDP made a joint statement on Saturday following a meeting at Dolmabahçe Palace concerning details of the roadmap, which is based on 10 articles, aiming to solve the country’s decades-long Kurdish problem. In the joint statement, the parties unveiled the 10 articles, which were originally penned by Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), for the progression of settlement talks. The roadmap also includes a commitment to change the Constitution.
Speaking at his party’s weekly group meeting on Tuesday, Bahçeli slammed the agreement between the government and the HDP, of which, he says, every article signals the “ruin” of the state.
“[They say the] PKK will convene an extraordinary congress, it will lay down its arms and peace will come, a way for democracy will be paved. They were also voicing [statements about] peace while taking about the Treaty of Sèvres, but it was obvious at the time what kind of hell it would bring to the Turkish people… this treasonous text is the collapse of Turkish Republic,” Bahçeli said.
The victorious Western powers imposed the Treaty of Sèvres on the Ottoman government at the end of World War I. The treaty was signed on Aug. 10, 1920, and provided for the establishment of Armenian and Kurdish states in Anatolia, but was in fact never put into effect as it was rejected by the national liberation movement, whose success led to its replacement by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
“There is no difference between the dirty rag of a treaty signed in Aug. 10, 1920, and the treasonous text [agreed] upon on Feb. 28, 2015,” Bahçeli added.
