Diyarbakır residents skeptical of Davutoğlu visit
DİYARBAKIR (DİHA) – With signs and billboards saturating Diyarbakır advertising the AKP's "accomplishments" ahead of tomorrow's rally for AKP General Head and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, Diyarbakır residents are skeptical.
With just a week to go until the election in Turkey, Prime Minister will be coming to Diyarbakır tomorrow to garner votes for the AKP in the main Kurdish city. However, the residents of the city say they have seen none of the party's advertised accomplishments come true.
According to 30-year-old Mevlüt Erdal, the AKP's claims to have significantly reduced unemployment and invested in the Kurdish region have no relation to reality. "If there was such a thing, the cafes in Diyarbakır would be empty right now. You can go look: the cafes around here are totally full of unemployed people," said Erdal.
Fuat Kardeş, 49, said he is wondering what exactly Davutoğlu has to say to the people of Diyarbakır. Kardeş said that the AKP government has spent the last 13 years "blackmailing" the Kurdish people with the unfulfilled promise of the peace process.
'He'll go as soon as he comes'
"He'll go as soon as he comes," said Bilal Erim, 40, commenting on the PM's visit. "The things he says are just words out of the palace. I seriously doubt that the people are going to grant any dignity to those words." Referring to the billboards advertising the AKP's removal of the state of emergency in the region, Erim said one only had to glance at the tanks parked around the city's streets and watch the constant stream of arrests and house raids to see the truth behind the claim.
'You vote for us, we'll keep killing you'
"He threw our spouses in jail and killed our children. He declared war on Diyarbakır. Now he's coming here wanting votes? We don't want him," said Garip Turhan, 34. He noted that just a few years after the AKP bombed its own citizens in the village of Roboski, in Şırnak province, the party has been putting up similar billboards there. "It's like, 'we're killing you, and we're putting up billboards. But you still vote for us. You vote for us, we'll keep killing you.'"
'Peace process did not even appear in AKP's election brochure'
34-year-old Yücel Akay noted that the AKP, which likes to trumpet the peace process as its accomplishment, said the peace process did not even appear in the party's election brochure. The party's answer to the outrage? The peace process "got lost at the printer's office." Akay said it was hard to take seriously a party that did things like this—and that could only ensure attendance at rallies by ordering public servants to attend.
(cm/nt)
