The 17th International Kurdish Conference hosted by the EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) in the European Parliament ended on Thursday with a final resolution in its second day.
The main reason for the destruction and loss of life caused by the disaster was the rent-seeking policies and the monist state system in Turkey, concluded the conference, starting its final declaration with a commemoration message for the victims of the 6 February earthquakes.
The conference participants urged Turkey, the European Union, the Council of Europe and international institutions for a solution to the Kurdish conflict.
In this context, they emphasised that the armistice called for by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) due to the earthquakes should be made bilateral in order to continue and called for the resumption of the dialogue between the Turkish government and the PKK.
Recalling the responsibility of the European Union and Europe based on the Treaty of Lausanne signed 100 years ago, the participants concluded that the PKK should be removed from the terror list in order to solve the Kurdish conflict.
The conference’s final declaration also points out that a ban on Turkey’s second-largest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), is unacceptable and that the opposition in the country should take a stance on this issue. The conference also calls on the European Union and the Council of Europe to take a clear stand against the attempt to close the party.
The end of the severe isolation of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in Turkey’s İmralı Island Prison is a historical and long overdue necessity, according to the EUTCC Conference. The conference said that the İmralı prison is “the starting point for the most massive human rights violations in Turkey’s prisons.”
The conference urged the international community that the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) should be recognised as a democratic administration model.
“The Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria, whose social contract is based on the concept of democratic autonomy, is a possibility for a pluralistic democratic Middle East. In this way, the ethically and confessionally connoted lines of conflict, together with the war crimes -ecocide, genocide, feminicide, violation of international law – can be stopped and overcome,” the declaration follows.
International and independent organisations should investigate the allegations that Turkish forces used chemical weapons in their military operations against Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq, the conference calls.
