BDP holds Washington conference

This week, the BDP representative office in Washington held a conference to discuss the role of the Kurds in the Middle East. Professor Michael Gunter, the Secretary-General of the EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) and professor of political science at Tennessee Tech University, wrote this report.

 

 

THE CURRENT STATE REGARDING THE TURKISH-KURDISH PEACE PROCESS

Professor Michael Gunter

On 28 October 2013, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Representative Office in the United States, organized a one-day conference on “The Kurdish Role in the New Middle East” at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The primary concern of this conference was to analyze the current state of the foundering Turkish-Kurdish peace process. This brief report will detail some of the most important points made at this conference.

Cengiz Candar, a prominent Turkish journalist, argued that a neutral third party facilitator was needed, not a one-man show as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan currently appeared to be. At the present time the Turkish and Kurdish sides are finding it difficult to dialogue. Indeed, Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chair of the BDP, said that so far the peace process has seemed more like a monologue than a dialogue. Cengiz Candar also added that the following are necessary for the peace process to move forward: 1. Patience; 2. A vision for an end game; 3. Political courage; and 4. A procedure to follow facilitated by a third party.

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Conference to be held in Washington next week: The Kurdish Role in the New Middle East

 

Organized by Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Representative Office in the USA

Date: Monday, 28 October 2013, 09:00 a.m. – 05:00 p.m.
Place: The National Press Club, Holeman Lounge
529 14th St NW Washington, D.C., 20045

The Kurds have emerged as crucial regional actors out of the rapid political transformations that have been sweeping the Middle East over the last decade. This trend has accelerated with the Arab Spring. The “Kurdish problems” that have been compartmentalized across the four nation-states in the Middle East are now more interconnected and more globalized. This has been pressuring Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran as well as global powers to revise their conventional Kurdish policies. The Kurds have been viewed as an element of regional instability throughout the twentieth century. Recent political developments, however, strongly suggest that while the provision of justice for Kurds is essential for the restoration and maintenance of order in the Middle East, the Kurds themselves command valuable political, economic, social and human resources to contribute to the advancement of peace and stability for the states and peoples of the region in the twenty first century.

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A people without a voice: Syrian Kurds and The future of the Middle East

September 30, 2013 

American University, School of International Service, Center of Peacebuilding and Development

                                                                                                                                         

Panel discussion presentation:

By Saif Badrakhan, Kurdistan National Congress- KNK, USA Representative

 

The future of the Kurds, Western Kurdistan and the war in Syria

The 50 million Kurds live on their ancestral land Kurdistan for more than 5000 years. The Kurdish nation has been occupied and divided between four countries  by the victories allies after the World War I. This criminal unjust action created
a historical tragedy for the Kurdish people. The countries of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq cooperated and used forced cultural assimilation, forced emigration,
massacres and genocide in the last 90 years to assimilate and eliminate the Kurdish nation, but failed to accomplish their colonial aims.

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