Barzani and Erdogan Meet in Diyarbakir: A Historical Day

On 16th November 2013, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a mass meeting in Diyarbakir, the biggest city in Turkish Kurdistan, with the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government Masoud Barzani. While many political analysts hailed the meeting as historical, the opposition and a number of commentators attacked Erdogan for abandoning Turkey’s traditional policies towards Kurds in general, and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq in particular. Especially the fact that Erdogan addressed Barzani with his official title: "The President of the Kurdistan Regional Government", and his reference to the Kurdish populated area in Northern Iraq as "Kurdistan" was seen as a radical break from traditional state policy towards the Kurds. The present news analysis argues that the "Diyarbakir Meeting" was indeed a break with traditional Turkish state policies towards the Kurds and possibly an important step on the road to full recognition and equality between Kurds and Turks in Turkey