Speaking at the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Council meeting, Co-Mayor Serra Bucak condemned the attacks in Aleppo and said: “We hope the process will evolve in a democratic, peaceful and pro-solution direction.”

The first sitting of the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Council’s regular January meeting was held at the municipal service building. Council members attended the meeting, chaired by Metropolitan Municipality Co-Mayor Serra Bucak.

In her opening remarks, Co-Mayor Bucak drew attention to developments in the Middle East, criticised the attacks against Kurds in Syria’s city of Aleppo over the past week, and said the massacre that had taken place was alarming.

Emphasising the threat posed to the region’s peoples by international powers, Co-Mayor Bucak recalled the peoples’ democratic project of living together in the face of conflict. Condemning the massacre in Aleppo, Co-Mayor Bucak said: “We hope that democratic reason, the reason of living together; the reason to build together, in peace and in tranquillity, a Turkey for all of us—a Turkey that is democratising—together with the developments in the Middle East and the resolution process ongoing here, is neither sacrificed to such a matter nor is a solution conceived without it.”

“A resolution there will also affect here”

Pointing to the region’s multi-identity structure, Co-Mayor Bucak concluded her remarks as follows: “In fact, when we speak of democratisation here and of the resolution process, we are not speaking of a solution without there. The people there—whom we refer to—are our brothers and sisters; they are Kurdish people with whom we share the same fate. Nor are they the only ones. Syria has a pluralistic structure. There are Alawites, there are Druze, there are Kurds, there are Sunni Arabs. Of course, we do not consider this independent of the resolution process here. Neither does the community here, nor do our colleagues engaged in politics here think in this way, nor should we think in this way. We hope this process evolves in a positive, constructive and peaceful direction—towards a process of resolution. A resolution process there will also positively and peacefully affect the resolution process here. We say it will strengthen the shared destiny and hope of living together among the peoples there.”

Following Co-Mayor Bucak’s remarks, the agenda items were discussed at the Council meeting.