GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

because they have been banged up by Erdoğan, the President who is creating

this tyranny there. Berdan speaks good English. He studied here as a lawyer

and I think he was the second person from his farming family to ever get to

university. He went back to Turkey and then he became a Member of

Parliament for the Kurdish community, so a massive welcome to Berdan.

(Applause)

BERDAN ÖZTÜRK: Thank you very much. It is an honour to be here. I would like to

thank you very much for your invitation on behalf of our party, HDP. Yes, I

studied here, but I got my LLM degree at SOAS in 2009. I have not practised

English for nine years. If there is a problem, please let me know. I have an

interpreter here, he can translate if you do not understand. Is it okay? It is

fine? (Positive response from delegates) Before I start, I would like to give

some information about AKP and Mr. Erdoğan. When first they came to power

in 2002 they promised Turkish people, Kurdish people, all people who live in

Turkey, he said that he will improve democracy, he will respect the human

rights, he will respect freedom of expression. People supported Mr. Erdoğan

because of that. Yes, we had a democracy in Turkey, but that democracy was

not good. As doubtless you know, in the 1990s we had a lot of problems –

torture, human rights violations, you just name it. When Mr. Erdoğan came to

power he said, “I am going to make Turkey a better country, make a good

democracy out of tyranny”, but he has not kept his promises.

As Kurdish people, we have been fighting for our rights, for our freedoms for

over 100 years in Turkey, just in Turkey. I am not talking about Iraqi Kurdistan,

Syrian Kurdistan, Iran Kurdistan, just in Turkey, we have been struggling for

over 100 years. What do we want? We want just our freedom. We want to be

equal with other Turkish people. We want to learn our language at schools, our

mother tongue. We do not want to separate from Turkey, we want to live

together, but they should respect our mother tongue, our history, our culture.

That is all we want. Yes, Mr. Erdoğan said, “The Kurdish question, it is my

problem, I am going to solve this problem”. He promised a lot of times, but he

has not kept his promises. In 2013 Mr. Erdoğan started a peace process.

There was a ceasefire between PKK and the Turkish Government. Mr. Öcalan

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