The pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) is planning to take the issue of excessive police violence at Newroz celebrations last weekend to parliament, as well as the fact that Siirt Police Chief Cuma Ali Aydin refused to shake hands with Diyarbakir MP Akin Birdal from the DTP. The DTP demands his dismissal.

The Nevruz/Newroz spring festival has been appropriated by Kurds in the last decades as a day of political protest and an expression of their demands for recognition of a Kurdish identity.  

Speaking to bianet, Birdal held the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior responsible for this year’s unrests.

Unrests in Siirt, Van, Hakkari, Yüksekova... 

In the last years, Newroz celebrations in Siirt, in southeastern Turkey, were peaceful, but this year Siirt joined Hakkari, Van and Yüksekova, also in the southeast of Turkey, with unrests. There were two people killed, one in Van and one in Yüksekova. There were many more injured, and many taken into police custody.

In Siirt, five people were injured, two of them police officers.

The Siirt Chief of Police further refused to shake hands with Birdal, saying, “I don’t shake hands with anyone who refuses to call a child murderer (he was referring to PKK leader Öcalan) a terrorist.”

Cumhur Kiliccioglu, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Siirt Mücadele newspaper, told bianet that this year’s events in Siirt filled him with sadness. He saw the reason for the riots in the refusal for permission for the celebration date at the weekend.

Prime Minister and Minister of Interior have failed 

According to Birdal, the Minister of the Interior, Besir Atalay, had promised that he would ensure that the celebrations/demonstrations would be peaceful, “but it is clear that his orders were not followed.”

When the Chief of Police refused to shake his hand, Birdal told him, “that I am a member of parliament, and that a civil servant entrusted with the security of the state should not take such an attitude and talk like that. He said, ‘I am talking as a citizen.’”

Birdal announced that the DTP would apply to parliament about the excessive police violence and the dismissal of the Siirt Police Chief.

He added that the Prime Minister’s explicit refusal to meet the DTP, despite many requests for appointments, has affected state officials in Anatolia. He thus held the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior responsible for the unrests, too.

This year’s Newroz celebrations were only given permission for 21 March, which fell on a Friday. However, the organisers had wanted celebrations on the weekend, for which permission was not given in Siirt and some other provinces. Anyone gathering at the weekend then faced intervention from the police for “illegal” demonstration. (MC/GG/AG)