Ruling Turkish Party MP: Kurdish autonomy 'negotiable'

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (K24) - MP Galip Ensarioglu of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey said on Monday that Kurdish autonomy in Turkey could be negotiable.

Speaking to Haberturk TV, the ethnic Kurdish politician criticised the many trenches and barricades set up and defended by the PKK-affiliated Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDGH) in several Kurdish towns that have become a flashpoint of intense clashes between YDGH fighters and the Turkish military due to imposed curfews.

More than a dozen towns and cities including Silopi, Cizre, Nusaybin, and Diyarbakir have recently become the scenes of weeks-long curfews and clashes, due in part to declaring “autonomous self-rule” last summer. Hundreds of civilians, PKK-affiliated fighters and Turkish soldiers and police have been killed in the clashes and thousands more have had to flee to safer population centres.

"It is clear where this business [self-rule] should be discussed, it is the Parliament. Self-rule is [politically] feasible. We should be able to discuss autonomy, and also the executive presidency system in a democratic environment." said MP Galip Ensarioglu.

Mentioning the "Metropolitan Municipalities Act" that was passed in 2012 by the then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, Ensarioglu said that the law was a model that can strengthen local rule. The act was fiercely opposed by the Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). MHP's deputy head Oktay Vural claimed that the plan to turn Kurdish-majority provinces of Wan (Van), Mardin, and Urfa into metropolitan municipalities like Diyarbakir was the result of negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, in 2011.

Ensarioglu further told Haberturk TV that "if [Metropolitan Municipalities Act] is not [accomplished] enough then we [Turkey] can implement the European Charter of Local Self-Government," a 1985 agreement adopted by the Congress of the Council of Europe and signed three years later by the Republic of Turkey. The charter's 11 articles, 6 of which Turkey has put reservations on, give substantial authority to local or regional governments to be able regulate and manage their share of public affairs.