A long forced trek of pro-Kurdish party members
Behçet Dalmaz, Azer Demir
Hakkari-Doğan News Agency
Members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society, or DTP, were not permitted to travel by vehicle to open the party's new premises in the Derecik district of Hakkari. The local gendarme forced 700 party members to leave their vehicles and walk 13.5 hours to reach Derecik because of ongoing operations and security conditions in the region.
The DTP members set off from the Şemdinli district of Hakkari to open the party building, located in neighboring Derecik district. As they were not permitted to go there in their vehicles, they had to walk for about 30 kilometers. When they arrived in Derecik, it was after midnight but they still opened the party's building. The group included DTP's Hakkari Deputy, Hamit Geylani, and Van Deputy, Özdal Üçer, as well as municipal heads from Yüksekova and Hakkari.
The DTP members had to walk for 13.5 hours accompanied by some jammers (frequency blockers) and military vehicles. They first arrived in the Ortaklar Karakolu to undergo ID control. From there, they were asked to get on vehicles from Derecik and they did so. The group that performed the opening of the party building returned to Şemdinli on Monday morning.
“Such actions – DTP members going to Derecik as a group – pose a danger not only against the locals, village guardsmen, soldiers and the ongoing operation in the region, but also the members themselves,” the governor's office in Hakkari said in a statement.
However, Geylani said if members of a party other than DTP would have made such an attempt they would not have been stopped.
“They did not permit us because we are members of the DTP. Security reasons were uttered as justification,” he said.
Hand grenades were thrown at the DTP's former building in Derecik Saturday night.
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September 4, 2008
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