HDP co-chair Pervin Buldan greeted the Congress in Kurdish and Turkish and said: "Even though they are physically in prisons, Selahattin Demirtaş, Figen Yüksekdağ, Sebahat Tuncel, Abdullah Zeydan, Selma Irmak, İdris Baluken, Aysel Tuğluk, Gülser Yıldırım, are with us. 

I send my heartfelt greetings and love to Çağlar Demirel, Gültan Kışanak, Nurhayat Altun, Selma Irmak, Selçuk Mızraklı, Bekir Kaya and all our comrades, whose names I cannot mention here.

We send our greetings and respect to the great veteran of the HDP thought, Mr. Abdullah Öcalan." 

Buldan said the following;

"On the eve of the change that will take place in Turkey and the Middle East, we hold our congress with great assertion and determination in our struggle. Of course, we have not arrived here easily. We have resisted! Thousands of our friends have been taken hostage, but we have become millions!

When it comes to Kurds, when it comes to the opposition or the democrats, all ruling forces come together with their unlawful structures. But there is something that they cannot see: There is an alliance of the oppressed peoples in front of them: Cizre has an alliance within Gezi! Istanbul and Diyarbakir have an alliance with İzmir and Hakkari!

On this side of the border, while people commit suicide because of hunger, poverty, on the other side of the border the children of the poor people die one by one in the war. This is the regime they deem appropriate for the people: unemployment, hunger, poverty, death.

They turned this land, where we could live with peace, into the land of death. 

They invaded Northern Syria and Afrin to prevent Syrian peace and Kurdish democratic representation in Syria. And as they plundered and invaded Syrian territory with tanks, on this side of the border, they invaded the municipalities with their trustees. They have seized 38 municipalities from us. All they know is political theft. They say, "Kurds cannot choose, Kurds cannot rule." But whatever they do; Kurds will continue to vote for their own representatives and rule their own cities! And not just the municipalities, we are determined to govern this country and we are coming!"