Akbulut: We Were Always With Kurdish People

Hikmet Cetin of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), who was Foreign Minister between 1991 and 1994, also declared that no such offer had come from Saddam Hussein during his time in office.

Cetin remembered help offered to Kurdish groups in Northern Iraq after the Halabaja massacre and during the first Gulf War. Cetin said, “We were their door to the World. We gave them every sort of support, from electricity to building roads.”

Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Commission Chairman Mehmet Dulger has said that Kurdish people were more important than their leaders and claimed that without Turkey, Kurds would not stand-alone.

Elsewhere, Iraqi Constitutional Committee Chairman Dara Nurettin, who is of Kurdish origin, and Iraq Turkmen Front Chairman Faruk Abdullah discussed the Turkish troop deployment issue with BBC radio.

Nurettin specified that Turkish troops wanted to enter Iraq with the goal of eradicating the terrorist organization, Kurdish Workers Party – Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (PKK-KADEK).

Abdullah, on the other hand, avoided adopting any clear attitude on the Turkish troop deployment subject at all.