“The Kurdish people have never changed their stance towards the one flag principle [of Turkey]. They have adopted the flag of the Republic of Turkey as their own since its foundation. We have the same flag… The Kurdish people have never had a problem with the Turkish flag and will never. The prime minister does not have to worry about that,” pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Diyarbakır deputy Nursel Aydoğan said on Friday in response to the prime minister's criticism.
"Kurdish people are not uneasy with the flag of the [Turkish] state," BDP Co-chairperson Selahattin Demirtaş also said on Friday.
Erdoğan's remarks came after Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan called on PKK forces to cease fire and withdraw from Turkey in a long-awaited historic announcement during celebrations of Nevruz, a spring festival observed mainly by Kurds, in Diyarbakır on Thursday.
“We are in a period where we must spoil the games of barons that feed on terror and violence. Turkish flags should have been there at the gathering in Diyarbakır. The lack of flags contradicted Öcalan's message [for peace]. It was provocative. We will get rid of some problems in time and finally put an end to the 30-year-old trouble [PKK terror],” Erdoğan said, speaking in the Netherlands during an official visit.
Participants at Nevruz celebrations displayed PKK flags and Öcalan posters, while there were no Turkish flags flying.
“Nevruz is not an official holiday, it is the festival of a people. We see it as the symbol of an insurgency. It is not proper to criticize people for not holding [Turkish] flags on a day which is not officially a holiday,” Aydoğan further said in response to Erdoğan's remarks.
“A door is now opening on a democratic process after a period of armed struggle. Guns should fall silent and politics should come to the foreground. The stage has been reached where our armed forces should withdraw beyond the borders... It is not the end, it is the start of a new era,” Öcalan said in a statement read by Kurdish politicians at the celebrations attended by a quarter of a million people.
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