HALKWEB-Former Ambassador and CHP Foreign Policy Officer Namık Tan's statement on the developments in Syria caused a resignation in the party. Former CHP Bitlis Deputy Provincial Chairperson Şevin Kızılca reacted to Tan's statements and announced her resignation from CHP.
As a Kurd who has served in the Republican People's Party for years, I do not accept Namık Tan's Rojava statements and reject them outright.
The essence of this text, written in lines and written in ornate and technical language, is this:
Much is pretended to have been said, but the Kurds...- Şevin Kızılca (@sevinkizilca) January 20, 2026
“As a Kurd who has served in the Republican People's Party for years, I do not accept Namık Tan's Rojava statements and I reject them outright.” Kızılca's resignation statement, which he also announced on his social media account, is as follows:
“The essence of this text, which is written in a flowery and technical language, is this: It pretends to say a lot, but the massacre of Kurds in Syria today is deliberately ignored. Jihadist terror is ignored and the security of the Kurds is completely trivialized.
The political meaning of this text is this: Let the Kurd not see his mother; if necessary, be neighbors with jihadist terrorists, as long as the Kurdish voice is not heard. I do not accept any politics that legitimizes the surrender of Kurdish lives, will, honor, property and dignity to Colani, a tie-wearing terrorist who is part of a jihadist, beheading, gangster order like HTS, and the terrorist order he represents. I reject to the end a CHP policy that normalizes this surrender and remains silent about it. I make an open call from here: Eastern and Southeastern provincial chairs, Kurdish social democratic deputies within the party and headquarters executives; unite, raise your voices within the party and openly criticize the Republican People's Party's Syria policy.
While my brothers and sisters are being slaughtered, beheaded, civilians are under the threat of an open genocide, it is a breaking point for me that this political party, which I have worked for years, cannot utter a single clear, courageous and condemning word against this massacre.
If a political party cannot openly condemn jihadist terrorists with a political mind tainted with anti-Kurdish sentiment, if it makes the massacres of Kurds invisible under the name of “geopolitical analysis”, there is no point in working for that party. Because this politics does not accept my existence. It does not recognize the massacres my people have suffered.
It ignores my pain, my truth. A politics that does not accept my existence will also remain silent in the face of my death. This is not a moment of anger; it is a conscious, moral and honorable choice.
I will not be part of any structure that chooses silence in a place where Kurds are being massacred. For these reasons, I respectfully inform the public that I have resigned from the Republican People's Party.
What did Namik Tan say?
Noting that the only guide for the CHP in foreign policy is reason and the only priority for the CHP is national sovereignty and interests, Namık Tan said in a social media post, “There is no more SDF in Syria.”.
Tan said, “East of the Euphrates, which is called ”Rojava” or “DAANES”, was not and never has been “Syrian Kurdistan”. In Syria, Kurds were the majority in three separate pockets in Afrin, Kobane and the settlements such as Qamishli, Amoudah, Derik at the northeastern end of the map called “duckbill”. However, almost the entire population of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is Kurdish, and almost the entire Kurdish population of Iraq lives in the KRG. Moreover, the KRG is separated from the rest of the country by its mountainous topography.”.
He was disciplined for criticizing Burcu Köksal
Şevin Kızılca, who criticized Afyonkarahisar Mayor Burcu Köksal's words “When I am elected, the doors of Afyonkarahisar Municipality will be open to all political parties except DEM Party” before the local elections on March 31, 2024, was referred to discipline by her party at that time.
However, the CHP administration intervened and prevented Kızılca's dismissal.