DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY PARTY AND TURKEY

That this House deplores the proceedings taken in the Turkish Constitutional Court to ban the Turkish political party known as the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which has a large and important following among Turkey's Kurdish populace including 22 elected Kurdish members of the Turkish National Assembly, constituting its fourth largest faction dedicated to democratic principles and almost the only specifically Kurdish political voice available to the 18 to 20 million Kurdish-speaking people of Turkey who have long been deprived of due and proper ethnic recognition; urges the Government to call on the Turkish government actively to seek the withdrawal of those proceedings which endanger the fundamental principles of pluralistic democracy, and instead to ensure that the DTP and other political parties are permitted to participate in democratic activities and parliamentary procedures so that the political and cultural rights of the Kurdish people in Turkey and their social and economic development are not impeded by the state but are supported and encouraged; and notes that political and democratic conditions are created that will end the armed conflict and resolve the Kurdish question through peace, negotiation and dialogue.