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Interior Minister Muammer GÃ¼ler: Conditions for second stage of settlement process yet to mature

10 July 2013 17:36 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Interior Minister Muammer Güler has said conditions are not yet ready for the government to move into the second stage of the settlement process.

“We have not passed to the second stage of the process because the conditions have not matured yet,” Güler said on Wednesday, APA reports quoting Today’s Zaman.

His remarks run contrary to earlier statements by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), whose leader Selahattin DemirtaÅŸ stated late last month that the second stage of the settlement process recently launched by the government to end Turkey's terrorism problem had begun.

It is thought that the first stage of the settlement process, launched with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) by the government in October 2012 to end the decades-old terrorism problem in the country, is a cease-fire and the withdrawal of PKK forces from Turkey; the second stage consists of constitutional and legal amendments that would bring democratic reforms for Kurds and the third stage is the laying down of PKK arms. A formal agreement on the stages has not been announced.

DemirtaÅŸ said his party had held the first official negotiations on the second stage of the settlement process with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, adding, “The government says they are preparing to start the second stage of the process.”

Güler's remarks come on the heels of a meeting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan chaired on Tuesday night to evaluate recent developments regarding the settlement process.

Cabinet ministers and ErdoÄŸan's close aides gathered at a meeting chaired by the prime minister to draw a roadmap, as Parliament is readying to take its summer recess on July 14.

The details of the meeting remain unclear, as no official statement was made to the press.

Head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) parliamentary group, which is outspokenly opposed to the settlement process, Oktay Vural, said the process was a “theater play,” and a ploy by the AK Party to release imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in the third stage of the process. He said recent statements from BDP members asserting that Öcalan's health is fading are “purposeful” remarks to prepare the public for the terrorist leader's eventual release.