The Kurdish problem, Barzani's move and the Turkish referendum

A delegation of the People's Democratic Party (HDP) in the Turkish parliament is expected to meet Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ on April 3 to discuss the decision by jailed HDP co-chairman Selahattin Demirtaş to go on hunger strike, together with another MP, Abdullah Zeydan, in protest at prison conditions, HDP deputy Sırrı Süreyya Önder said in an interview with Fox TV Turkey on March 31.

Önder said the delegation would consist of him and Pervin Buldan, another member of the party which focuses on the Kurdish issue. Together, the two have visited Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a number of times in the framework of proxy dialogue between the Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) governments and the PKK between 2011 and 2015.

Pointing at the situation of the jailed HDP deputies accused of having links with the PKK, Önder said it was not them but himself who had direct links with the PKK since he had talked to PKK figures "perhaps a hundred times" during the dialogue period with the knowledge of government officials, saying that accusing the HDP deputies of acts of terrorism was "slender."

Recently on March 24, Önder testified before a court and said that during discussions between the PKK and the government, he survived numerous assassination attacks and that the government had allocated eight officers to protect him at different times. "I was the one from among my friends who read a statement [of reconciliation] sitting at the same level of the ministers of the government," he said in reference to the Feb. 28, 2015, joint press conference in Istanbul that announced the PKK's intention to abandon arms and the government's intention to take necessary steps to ensure the three-year...

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