10 November 2010
Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) deputy parliamentary group chairmand Bengi Yıldız spoke Kurdish during his party's group meeting at the Turkish parliament.
Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) deputy parliamentary group chairmand Bengi Yıldız spoke Kurdish during his party's group meeting at the Turkish parliament.
In his speech Yildiz criticized the treatment of Kurdish as an unknown language by the Diyarbakır 6th High Criminal Court in the ongoing trial of 152 prominent Kurdish politicians.
The judges turned off the microphones of the defendants who spoke Kurdish and said “the defendant spoke in an unknown language” for the record.
Yildiz said that all BDP MP's will speak Kurdish everywhere necessary until its understood that the language they speak is Kurdish.
Yıldız also directed criticisms to the Kurdish deputies in the ranks of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) for remaining silent over the treatment of Kurdish as an “unknown language” at the Diyarbakır court.
“On every occasion, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recalls that there are 75 Kurdish deputies in the AK Party. I criticized the failure of any of the 75 Kurdish deputies in the AK Party to oppose to the Diyarbakır’s court naming Kurdish as an ‘unknown language.’ This is sufficient cause to be ashamed of those AK Party deputies.” he said.
When asked whether BDP deputies will also speak in Kurdish in the Parliament’s general assembly, Yıldız said, “We will speak in Kurdish wherever it is necessary.”
The public use of Kurdish was prohibited in Turkey following a 1980 military coup and the ban was in place until 1991.
ANF NEWS DESK /
ANF NEWS AGENCY
