MHP leader Bahceli slams government over peace talks with PKK

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli has strongly criticized the ongoing peace talks between the Turkish government and the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) Today`s Zaman reported.

Speaking on Tuesday during his party's parliamentary group meeting, the MHP leader said the territorial integrity of the county is threatened by these negotiations.

Bahceli said now that government representatives are visiting Ocalan at İmralı Prison, he decided that it was all right for him to visit the suspects jailed in İstanbul's Silivri Prison on coup charges.

State officials and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan have been meeting to broker a deal for disarming the terrorist group. The talks with Ocalan are being carried out by National Intelligence Organization (MİT) head Hakan Fidan, whose position as negotiator on behalf of the Turkish state has been confirmed by the government.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey and much of the international community, has waged a bloody campaign for self-rule in predominantly Kurdish-populated southeastern Anatolia since 1984. More than 40,000 people, including civilians and security forces, have been killed in clashes with the terrorist group.

Ocalan, imprisoned on İmralı Island in the Marmara Sea south of İstanbul since his capture in 1999, has significant influence among PKK members and supporters. The Turkish state believes talks with the terrorist head may lead to a timetable for withdrawal of PKK terrorists from Turkey and the eventual laying down of arms.

There is support for the peace talks from many circles in society including the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and Turkey's mainstream media.

Bahceli harshly criticizes Tatlıses for his tweet

Singer İbrahim Tatlıses was also a target of Bahçeli's criticism. Tatlıses recently said on Twitter that "What I long to see is bridges, not ditches, built on the path to peace." Referring to the tweet without naming Tatlıses, Bahceli said Tatlıses does not understand that the blood of martyred soldiers runs beneath the bridge Tatlıses is talking about and moreover, that the bridge will take us either to İmralı, the island where Ocalan is jailed, or to Kandil, the PKK headquarters in northern Iraq. Such a bridge cannot bring peace, he stated.