PKK's Karasu urges CHP for cooperation against government

PKK leader Mustafa Karasu has urged the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) to support them in their struggle against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) "for standing firm in the political arena."

Using the pen name of Hüseyin Ali in the pro-PKK Turkish daily Özgür Gündem, Karasu demanded support from the CHP, saying in his column that if they could count on "an important part of the CHP in this struggle, the AK Party government would be unable to even look for a place to hide."

In his speech in Diyarbakır in December, CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu came under fire in the wake of his statement that labeled terrorists digging ditches in urban areas of the country's southeastern provinces as "friends."

Kılıçdaroğlu also drew rebukes for statements he made at a parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday, as he levied criticism at television celebrity Beyazıt Öztürk, saying: "Why did you apologize? Don't you have guts? Aren't you brave? Who did you get upset? You may have upset child murderers at the most. Let them be upset."

The statement was vague, yet given that Öztürk apologized for offending people after a phone call considered as PKK propaganda on his TV show, some say that Kılıçdaroğlu was describing the government and the state as child murderers.

Previously in October, the CHP district head in Silvan in southeastern Diyarbakır, Abdülmenaf Manaz, protested the curfew imposed in the district and said that he has 12 children and would "join the PKK terrorists in the mountains if [he] was not old."

Meanwhile, there are some opposing voices in the party that criticize the attitude towards pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), typically described as the political wing of the PKK.

The party's Antalya deputy Deniz Baykal, a former party chairman, shared a tweet on his official account on Sunday, dismissing intra-party accusations that suggest he stands in a sectarian position because of sharing photos of several CHP deputies in order to shift blame onto them.

The published photos include images of the party's Istanbul deputies, Sezgin Tanrıkulu and Mahmut Tanal, at the funeral of a PKK terrorist. In another photo, Tanrıkulu is seen with HDP Mersin Deputy Ertuğrul Kürkçü on a plane. Baykal also criticized former CHP Vice Chairman Murat Özçelik for claims that he and his family voted for the HDP to pass the electoral threshold in the June 7 elections.