And not just that, in the past 15 years since 3500 citizens have lost their lives in unsolved murders, executions without trials, disappearances while in custody or under torture. In the past 30 years, that is since 1967 more than 50,000 citizens have been killed after the first student was murdered. We find ourselves faced with this truth because such was the government's preference. Milions of people in the country who live on borderline of hunger are deprived of the right to organize in order to be able to exercise their economic democratic rights. Even more importantly there is no freedom of thought in Turkey.
Freedom of thought has a greater importance than all of the other basic human rights.
Because society cannot express itself by openly writing and speaking about infringements of human rights or use its freedoms. In order to advance along the road to democratization, it is a priority that there be freedom of thought. A society must be able to debate its past and its future and open what is before it. In this situation everybody and every segment of society must be able to freely make known his position in terms of his own identity and his own interests in terms of beliefs and society and offer what he can contribute to the democratic development. After this, social peace, that is the ending of the continuing war in the Southeast will open in front of the nation.