Centre for Kurdish Progress organised a discussion event at the British Parliamentary with the participation of academicians including Virendra Sharma from the Labour Party and Dr. Federico Venturi from Leeds University, Geography department.
The opening speeches were made by Dr. Michael Günter from Tennessee Technology University and Dr. Thomas Jeffrey Miley from the Darwin College, Cambridge University in Political Sociology department. Dr. Günter opened the discussion with the NATO issues tackling their responsibilities, Günter said the US has been protecting Turkey over PKK by underlining the fact that EU and US do consider PKK as a plain terrorist group.
Despite the chaotic civil diplomacy in Turkey, Dr. Günter was optimistic about the “peace process” as the Kurdish issues are now being solved in a political realm, compared to how it was back in 10 years ago. Dr. Günter said “Turkey needs to officially recognise the Kurdish issue and tackle it. As seen, the support and interferences of NATO barely helped anything to get better. There isn’t an Iraq anymore. The conflict between Kurdish and ISIS militants actually sort of served Turkish agenda however I believe Turkey needs to focus more on Kurdish agenda.”
Dr. Miley on the other hand, suggested that the external relations of and with the Middle East needs to be studied and tackled more. Dr. Miley invited NATO countries to sit down all together to negotiate what have been the results of their acts, especially those which have been aggressive and assailant. Miley also remarked the fact that the reason why ISIS has engendered itself was because NATO countries’ insusceptible attitude. Miley finally added that the “refugee crisis” shouldn’t be a crisis as it needs to be tackled in a friendly and accepting way.