ISTANBUL,— Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invited Friday the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to sever all ties with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

The president argued that as a HDP is now a political party with seats (80) in the Turkish parliament, it must break with the PKK group, which is considered as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU.

“An offshoot that attained representation at the parliament must do its best [to cut off relations with PKK] as they apparently maintain an indirect link, even if not a direct one, with the terrorist organization,” he told the press after performing the Eid al-Fitr prayer at Istanbul’s Atasehir Mimar Sinan Mosque Friday.

In 2013 jailed Kurdish PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan called for a “historic” ceasefire, telling his fighters to lay down their arms and withdraw from Turkish soil, after many months of secret negotiations with the Turkish government.

However Kurds have become increasingly frustrated with the government’s policy on Syria, as Ankara refuses to support the Kurdish groups fighting Islamic State (IS) jihadists inside Syrian Kurdistan.

Government officials and Erdogan have regularly accused the HDP of having ties with the group and acting and speaking like its political wing.

Erdogan said intelligence services had established that there were ties between the HDP and the PKK, which the former has categorically rejected.

The Turkish president went on to argue that certain results in the June 7 parliamentary elections proved his point.

“The pro-Kurdish party swept the polls in hundreds of villages while other parties had zero percent vote,” he said, referring to Turkish Kurdistan in the southeast of the country where there is an important Kurdish presence. “It means the local people there are threatened with guns.”

Erdogan said that HDP should not attempt to play politics in the next stages of the process and should reject backing from an illegal group if it truly believed in democracy and wanted to stay within the parliamentary system.

During a live interview on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also said the HDP’s alleged links to the PKK were a cause for concern and called for the pro-Kurdish party to loosen its ties to the group.

The president also touched upon the Feb. 28 meeting between prominent government officials and HDP leaders at the Prime Ministry’s office in Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace where all sides agreed to pursue the solution process following 10 basic principles that would constitute the framework of a possible permanent agreement.

Erdogan rejected calling the Dolmabahce talks an “accord”, as it occurred between the government and a political party.

“Such an accord (…) can only take place at the parliament through joint efforts of the government and all other parties,” he said.

Since it was established in 1984 the PKK has been fighting the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state.

The PKK now limited its demands to establish an autonomous Kurdish region and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds, who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 75-million population but have long been denied basic political and cultural rights, its goal to political autonomy. A large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels.

Kurdish militant group threatened last week to target dams harnessing hydroelectric power in the main Kurdish southeastern Turkey, accusing the government of violating a fragile ceasefire.

Read more about the Turkish-Kurdish Peace Process

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