At the funeral of slain Kurdish human rights lawyer Tahir Elci on Nov. 28, the co-chair of Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas, decried hostility against Kurds in the country, charging that millions gloated over Elci’s killing and the government was apathetic. In other words, the HDP leader denounced not only the government but also ordinary Turks who remain indifferent to the oppressions Kurds face and even support them.

Most strikingly, Demirtas said, “The Kurdish people are well aware that what killed Tahir was not the state but the statelessness.” The remark sparked controversy on whether Demirtas meant that Elci would not have been killed if the Kurds had a state, or rebuked the Turkish state for failing to embrace and protect the Kurds as its own.

In remarks several days later, Demirtas hinted he used the expression in both senses. “The Kurds in the Middle East do not have a state. The Arabs have 22 states, but the Kurds have none. And Syria, Iraq and Turkey do not act as the states of Kurds,” he said, referring to countries with major Kurdish communities.

Demirtas had made a similar statement in December 2013, at the second anniversary of the killing of 34 young Kurds near Roboski, a village at the Iraqi border, who perished in a botched air raid intended at militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). “If there were a Kurdistan, the Roboski [massacre] would not have happened,” he said.