Turkey – AFP – 1/25/2015 – Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Sunday vowed that peace with Kurds would be achieved, seeking support from the country’s largest minority group in a key visit to the southeast.
“The peace process will definitely reach success in any case and eternal brotherhood… will prevail,” Davutoglu told a cheering crowd in the Kurdish majority city of Diyarbakir.
“We will walk altogether in the streets of Diyarbakir. We will walk shoulder to shoulder anywhere in the world, let it be Diyarbakir or the Middle East, as equal members of our nation,” he said.
Turkey’s peace process with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) appeared to be making progress until a standoff over the key Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane late last year.
Davutoglu on Sunday lauded the peace process as a “project of brotherhood” between Turks and Kurds, not a “conjectural” maneuver to win elections.
The prime minister saluted Kurds in their own language, drawing bursts of applause saying: “I want to learn our nice Kurdish language if I can find some time.”