OSMAN BAYDEMIR

I have had it up to here with the prosecutions, the government's attitude, the judiciary, the media's stance and the majority of Turks who view the Kurdish people's justified cause through a nationalist lens.

In primary school, every day and especially on Fridays, I was supposed to say, 'I am Turkish, and I am righteous and hardworking,' But all those things did not actually turn us into Turks. This system is somehow creating fake personalities.

If someone tried to assimilate you for years, if your language was forbidden, if the names of your hometown were changed, what would do you but revolt.

In Turkey, we have lived almost everything that could be lived; war and torture... The war concept was consumed to its limits. But there is only one way we have not tried: negotiations, peace, and talking.

I am at a crossroads; I have always been against armed opposition... I have chosen civil disobedience. But I will apologize to my people if there are funerals coming out of prisons. I will criticize myself and I won't be the mayor of Diyarbakir.

All of my life I have stayed away from violence and the instruments of violence, and have seen a legal, democratic struggle as the only means to achieve change.

I have had it up to here with the prosecutions, the government's attitude, the judiciary, the media's stance and the majority of Turks who view the Kurdish people's justified cause through a nationalist lens.

In Turkey, we have lived almost everything that could be lived; war and torture... The war concept was consumed to its limits. But there is only one way we have not tried: negotiations, peace, and talking.

In primary school, every day and especially on Fridays, I was supposed to say, 'I am Turkish, and I am righteous and hardworking,' But all those things did not actually turn us into Turks. This system is somehow creating fake personalities.

All of my life I have stayed away from violence and the instruments of violence, and have seen a legal, democratic struggle as the only means to achieve change.

I am at a crossroads; I have always been against armed opposition... I have chosen civil disobedience. But I will apologize to my people if there are funerals coming out of prisons. I will criticize myself and I won't be the mayor of Diyarbakir.

If someone tried to assimilate you for years, if your language was forbidden, if the names of your hometown were changed, what would do you but revolt.