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To challenge the opposition nationalists, Turkey’s ever self-confident Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan alluded to the Ottoman eyalet system of semi-autonomous provinces and recalled that during the Ottoman era there were eyalets called Kurdistan and Lazistan.
Devlet Bahceli, the leader of Turkey’s arch-nationalist opposition Nationalist Action Party (MHP) that at times assumes a racist outlook, realized the message of reconciliation from imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan that was read to more than a million people at Diyarbakir on March 21 could lead to a peace process and add much to Erdogan’s credibility. He decided to counter the process by organizing a series of public meetings.
