CHP leader goes to Diyarbakır, focuses on Kurdish issue

On June 20, that is tomorrow, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the social democratic main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), will be in the pre-dominantly Kurdish-populated city of Diyarbakır, in Turkey’s southeast, where he will attend an interesting meeting.

The meeting is organized by the Tigris Communal Research Center (DİTAM), a local think tank, as a part of its “Tigris Dialogue” seminars, in reference to the river Tigris, which the city is located on.

For three hours, Kılıçdaroğlu will answer the questions of 20 NGO representatives from not only Diyarbakır but also from neighboring cities. There is no doubt that Turkey’s chronic Kurdish issue is going to be the number one item on the agenda. The CHP head will be the second party leader to be invited to the Tigris Dialogue seminars, after Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-leader of the Kurdish problem-focused Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which shares the same grassroots as the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

DİTEM invited Kılıçdaroğlu at a time when important domestic and international developments are taking place. Those are the upcoming presidential elections, of which the first round will be held on Aug. 10; the dialogue initiative of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan with the PKK in pursuit of a political settlement; and the civil war(s) in Syria and Iraq, which have led to another Kurdish-controlled (with PKK influence) territory on Turkey’s border with Syria, after the one in Iraq; and, of course, there is also the sectarian fight in Iraq, in which Kurdish parties also play a role.

Kılıçdaroğlu recently made a call to the BDP (under its new roof as the...