The president of the Turkish Republic, Abdullah Gül have chosen to open the winter session of the Parliament with a conciliatory speech. As he had said in the past, Gül stated that “the Kurdish question has a security-related dimension as well as a dimension in democracy, socio-cultural structure and economics. There are broken hearts, disappointments and suspicions arising from flawed practices. What we should today is to develop a civilian will and confront our mistakes in the past and solve the question on democratic grounds rather than discussing whether such a question really exists or how it should be defined.”

The president also remarked that “the political language which fails to respond to problems, deadlocks and developments of our day needs to be replaced by a new, dynamic and tolerant one. I attach great importance to the adoption of a new political language. A political language can be constructive or destructive. … A new language that we will use in politics will facilitate the creation of an atmosphere for dialogue, which will eventually contribute to the settlement of Turkey’s important issues through a common understanding.”

Conciliatory words, but it remains to be see if words will be indeed followed by actions.