Garo Paylan: If "Yes" Vote Wins, This Will Mean Another Silence of the Armenians (EXCLUSIVE)

• 04.12.2017, 20:19
•  Region,  World,  Diaspora,  Interview

 

On the eve of the Constitutional referendum in Turkey to be held on April 16, "Armedia" IAA is conducting interviews with the representatives of the political forces of "Yes" and "No" camps.

"Armedia" IAA presents an exclusive interview with the representative of Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), Deputy of the Turkish Parliament with Armenian origin, Garo Paylan. 

 

 

 

- What is the position of your party on the constitutional changes in your country?

- Of course, we say no to this constitutional changes. The current Constitution has no respect to plurality, to the religions here. The Constitution says "one nation, one identity, one religion" and no respect to others. The draft Constitution is worse than the current one. It means one man - everything will be up to one man and nowadays that one man’s ideologies are in coalition with the nationalist party. It is like 100 years ago, it is like Taleat Pasha’s, Enver Pasha’s constitution and we know what happened after that. Now MHP’s and AKP’s constitution is the same. MHP’s representatives of the Constitutional Committee say that this is the Turk’s Constitution. It is a "true men’s" Constitution again – Erdogan and Bahceli, the same as the Constitution created by Enver Pasha and Taleat Pasha. The results of this Constitution were terrible. Again it will be the same.

We established this party for equality by all means, for Armenian issue, Kurdish issue, for LGBT, etc. We have thousands of reasons for saying "No" to this draft Constitution. Being a democracy, having respect to others - this is what we need. Thus we are against these Constitutional changes and we will strongly say "No" to it.

 

 

- What developments should be expected in the internal and external politics of Turkey in case it passes to presidential system?

- It will mean things will go wrong, because we have a coalition of AKP and MHP, which ended the peace process with PKK and they are carrying out policy for the Kurds not to have autonomy in Turkey and in Syria. If they have "Yes" vote, this will mean approval of this policy. This coalition is going to continue this policy till they hit to the wall or the country hits to the wall like 100 years ago. So we are trying to stop that process. "No" vote will somehow mean the end of this coalition and "Yes" vote will mean the approval of this coalition.

 

- What changes will the presidential system bring in the policy of the Turkish authorities towards religious minorities?

- We have been silent for three generations until the establishment of Turkish Republic, because the Kemalist ideology recognized one identity and we had to be silent as minorities for generations. 20 or 30 years ago because Kurds started struggling against this ideology we took advantage of it and started talking about our rights, to voice about our future – about the right to equally live in one land and of course, about our past – the Genocide. If "Yes" vote wins, this will mean another silence of the Armenians – just stay silent, take what "sultan" gives and you have to respect that, you should not ask more, like they are doing that to our patriarchate elections. They do not let us conduct that ourselves, they appoint whoever they want. This is a manifestation of authoritarianism, but we want democracy in our country. We need a democratic Turkey to have our rights respected, otherwise Armenian community will always be oppressed, unfortunately.