Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C-L). Photo: Hülya A. Gündüzalp/AA
Istanbul – Recep Tayyip Erdogan indicates he is open to meeting HDP MP Leyla Zana.
AA
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has indicated he is open to meeting a senior figure from Turkey’s Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
Speaking in Istanbul on Friday, Erdogan said the government had heard a call from Turkish MP Leyla Zana to meet.
Zana is a veteran politician with Kurdish origins and a deputy representing Agri in Turkey’s east.
Erdogan said: “Leyla Zana demanded the meeting. We discussed the demand at Bestepe [the Presidential Palace in Ankara] with our friends.
“As a result of this discussion, I am persuaded to meet her,” Erdogan told reporters during a speech in Istanbul.
However, speaking earlier this week, Erdogan had vowed that there would be no more talks or negotiations with the terrorist PKK group or the HDP.
“They [the PKK and HDP] will never be taken into consideration,” he had said.
Erdogan also strongly condemned a PKK-led attack on a school which left five children injured on Friday.
The incident happened in the Baglar district of Turkey’s southeastern province of Diyarbakir.
“This is really a sad incident. This attack proves how the terrorist organization [PKK] is immoral, coward and despicable. Actually, it is such a response to the 1,128 academics [who signed a petition to end anti-terrorist operations in the southeast],” Erdogan said.
An improvised explosive device, thrown by PKK terrorists, exploded in Celebi Eser secondary school’s yard while students were receiving their report cards, according to Diyarbakir’s provincial director of national education, Adnan Hurata.
Health officials said that the injured students’ lives were not at risk.
The PKK — also considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU — resumed its 30-year campaign against the Turkish state in late July last year.
Since then, more than 200 members of the security forces have been martyred and thousands of PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.