World Bulletin / News Desk

Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that theTurkish people will make a choice between the old and new Turkey in the local elections to be held on Sunday.

Erdogan spoke in the predominantly Kurdish populated Turkey's eastern city of Van on a rally for local elections to be held on March 30.

Defining the time before his party came to power as the old Turkey, PM Erdogan said, "There were bans on culture, languages, social and religious values in the old Turkey. The state was arrogant against its citizens and was discriminative against its people."

Erdogan stated that the AK party struggled to reform Turkey and establish the 'new Turkey' during the 12 years of the party's rule. "In the new Turkey there is peace and unity, there is no bloodshed," added Erdogan.

"If today political parties are doing their election campaigns in Kurdish language, this is because of our efforts," said Erdogan referring to the recent amendment in laws termed as the "democratization package."

Erdogan denied claims by the Kurdish nationalist opposition party, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) that the democratization package came to the Parliament with their efforts. He said that the "BDP had only 30 seats in the Parliament, whereas the AK party who had 326 seats were responsibile for passing the laws on the democratization package."

"We are the party of all people living in Turkey. We are not discriminative; we work for unity and peace," added Erdogan.

Touching upon the solution process of the Kurdish issue (Kurdish-Turkish peace process) Erdogan slammed the US-based scholar Fethulah Gulen and stated that Gulen had been against the solution process from the beginning.