Tension rose over the weekend between Turkey's Secretary for European Affairs Ömer Çelik and the European Parliament's rapporteur on Turkey Kati Piri.
In an interview with Ahval on Saturday 27 January, Piri (S&D, Netherlands) said that she did not consider the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) a threat for the European Union – unlike so-called Islamic State (IS/Da'esh). Her statement greatly displeased Çelik, who responded several times on Twitter.
"For Turkey, the issue at stake is crystal clear. We will continue to fight against Da'esh, PKK and other similar terrorist organisations all the way to the end. None of the statements of this rapporteur, who holds such wrong views, will be taken seriously by us", Çelik said, adding that Piri and others only considered those who threaten them as terrorists, but did not perceive those who attack others as any threat. In his view, "it is a tragedy that a politician, who doesn’t have the abc level knowledge on these issues or who rejects these even if she knows them, is the rapporteur for Turkey in the biggest parliament of Europe".
On Monday 29 January, Piri tweeted: "not for the first time have my statements been taken out of context and used for political goals". During her interview, she had said that the "PKK and its variations are not a threat" for the EU because "there are no attacks of PKK in the Netherlands, Belgium or France". "For us, when it comes to Syria (...) the threat is IS. The number one threat for Turkey is not IS. After decades of fighting with the PKK, now moving this fight to Syria, I can imagine that IS is not its priority", she added.
Piri stated that in a report she had drafted on the political situation in Turkey, which was adopted last July (see EUROPE 11824), the Parliament stood alongside the Turkish people in the fight against terrorism and reaffirmed its condemnation of the return of violence from the PKK, which the EU considered a terrorist organisation. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)