The speech by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, chairman of the Turkish parliament’s main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party [CHP], on May 7 to his party’s members of the parliament included tempestuous references to the peace process between the Turkish government and the PKK, but also had certain elements of truth.

I am quoting from the May 8 edition of the daily Milliyet: “I repeatedly asked [Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, ‘Why aren’t you talking?’ We are learning the facts from AKP’s [the ruling Justice and Development Party] spokesman at Kandil [the PKK command base in northern Iraq]. [Bulent] Arinc may be the government spokesman but they now also have a spokesman abroad. I am asking if what Karayilan said is true or not? We know he is telling the truth. Why should he lie? He says he was resolute and he [Erdogan] buckled  under the presence of guns. What else can he [Karayilan] say?

“A prime minister of a country can’t be a captive of a terror organization. You are a prisoner, you don’t know what you are saying and that is why you are not speaking out because you don’t know what to say: 76 million citizens are learning the truth from Kandil. It is Erdogan who is responsible for this shame.”

Although I am inured to crude and offensive language used in Turkish politics, I still couldn’t believe these words from Kilicdaroglu. I couldn’t be sure if Kilicdaroglu really described the PKK military-political chief Murat Karayilan as ”AKP’s Kandil spokesman” or if it was a typing error.