Turkey's Erdogan blasts autonomy call by Kurdish party as 'treason'

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday blasted a call by a leading Kurdish politician for autonomy for the country's Kurdish minority as "treason."



"What the co-leader has done is treason, provocation," Erdogan told reporters at an Istanbul airport before leaving for Saudi Arabia.

Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said at the weekend that Kurds in Turkey had to decide whether to live in autonomy or "under one man's tyranny".



Earlier, Erdogan blasted Russia and Iran as well as the Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish fighters for “massacring innocent people mercilessly” in Syria.

He said groups such as IS and the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) were “instruments of a global power struggle”.

“They are the same as the PKK here. They are no different,” he said, referring to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).