Whom does Turkey cajole: Kurds or EU?

Today Turkey’s Parliament will hold hearings on democratic reform plan related to “Kurdish initiative” and proposed by Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In particularly, this plan involves concessions in field of culture and language for Kurdish people in Turkey.

In connection with decades-old Kurdish issue, the Kurdish Initiative Plan proposes to allow using Kurdish language in public and political events, opening of Departments of Kurdish language and literature at some Turkey’s universities, and, at least, Kurdish broadcasting.

Besides, the Kurdish Initiative Plan involves item of historical names of some Kurdish localities on South-East of Turkey. It proposes to restore the historical names of hundreds of Kurdish places in Turkey. This is a long-term plan that doesn’t mean any changing in Constitution.

Meanwhile, this Plan caused a great protest among the Turkish opposition which now blames the ruling Justice and Development Party for ‘demagoguery’ and argues that actually Turkey under its dream to enter EU is trying to cajole the EU through this plan, and doesn’t have a goal to solve the decades-old Kurdish issue. By the way, Turkey’s Constitution has an Article pointing out that “everyone who involved in Turkey through citizenship – is a Turk”, and another one that bans the use of any other language but Turkish at state universities.

In this connection, it is expected a fierce battle at Turkey’s Parliament where the ruling Party has to speak on initiated plan that brought so many protests and even outrage among Turkish.