Ms. NIA ZLATIF (Teacher, Iraq): (Through translator) It is a disgusting flag for the Kurdish people.
From sanctions to wars, it's devastated the Kurdish people and they are suffering a great deal.
"It is necessary that the Kurdish people will go and vote, and give this day great attention, " he said.
Mr. OSMAN BAYDEMIR (Mayor, Diyarbakir, Turkey): (Through Translator) Over the course of the last six years, the Kurdish people were disappointed.
But the generals might not like that either, because one of their bogeys, the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party, would then probably get seats.
The PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) has waged a guerrilla campaign in south-east Turkey for the establishment of an ethnic homeland for the Kurdish people.
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On this day, in this city, the Kurdish people wanted to show that there was more to their cause than the armed struggle alone.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki congratulated the Kurdish people on their elections in a speech delivered in Washington and broadcast on Iraq's state TV.
That's northern Iraq, where the Kurdish people live and live in - I gather, Annie - more harmony now than you've seen in quite some time.
"However, the legitimacy gained by the organisation's struggle among Kurdish people eventually made it difficult for them to prevent their daughters joining the PKK, " Dr Caglayan says.
He has used chemical weapons against the Kurdish people in an attack on a genocidal scale, and he has sent his forces into Kurdistan to conduct widespread slaughter.
Kirkuk is largely inhabited by Kurdish families, by Kurdish people.
But Turkey's other main parties are doing even worse: the same poll shows Mr Ecevit's Democratic Left running last, behind the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party, which also faces a possible ban.
As you get closer to the mountain you leave the main road and wind your way through a series of Kurdish villages many of which have borne witness to the persecution and struggle that the Kurdish people have endured over the past few decades.
He also snubbed members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (DTP) in parliament.
Now US officials, on the record, say that when they learned of this practice, they absolutely stopped and, in fact, they went as far as to present a list of 42 names to Kurdish officials, demanding that these people be released.
Every time he says there's no Kurdish problem he devastates hopes of the young people, wipes out their plans for the future and sends them to the PKK front.
This latest incident comes after a string of car bombs shook the city Monday, killing 12 Kurdish troops and a civilian and wounding several people, U.S. and Iraqi authorities reported.
But such a move would upset a lot of people, not least Turkey, which has been watching the new-found Kurdish confidence with growing alarm and is not averse to stirring up discontent among Iraq's Turkomen people, who live largely in the north.
It said a second targeted rebel-held areas in the Kurdish-majority Hasaka province, killing at least 16 people.
Meanwhile, violence swept through northern Iraq on Thursday as Turkish warplanes pounded Kurdish rebel targets and suicide bombers killed at least 18 people in a nearby province, authorities in Iraq said.
Something else we noted in one of the towns that had been freed from Iraqi control was that the local people, who are Kurds, greeted the Kurdish fighters as well as the American soldiers with no standoffishness at all.
At least 19 people have died in south-east Turkey after Kurdish rebels launched an attack on a Turkish border post, according to local media.
And while the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq has condemned PKK attacks on innocent people in Turkey, the group still finds support among some Iraqi Kurds.
Iran is overwhelmingly Shiite and Shiite Muslims comprise the majority of people in Iraq, which has huge Sunni Muslim and Kurdish populations.
The two main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq have a firm base among their own people but would be unlikely contenders for national power.
Two people died in the town of Altinova recently when a Kurdish youth rammed a truck into a group of Turks who were taunting Kurds by playing loud nationalist tunes.
Two people have been detained in connection with the deaths of three Kurdish activists in Paris earlier this month, French media reports say.
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Many people here think the PKK guerrillas are freedom fighters, fighting for Kurdish culture and Kurdish citizens.
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