Turkish president stresses need for immediate action on Kurdish issue

"You can refer to it as either terrorism, the 'Kurdish issue' or 'Southeast issue', but isn't it the most important problem of Turkey," Gul told reporters in Kyrgyzstan, where he met Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and Prime Minister Igor Chudinov.Â

"This issue will grow larger the long we take to solve it," he added.Â

He also said all Turkish political parties, including the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or DTP, need to contribute to efforts to solve this issue.

"This is everybody's problem. Everybody needs to be constructive and act as facilitator in order to solve this issue in a maturity that befits Turkey," he said.Â

The issue has been high on Turkey's agenda since Gul said earlier this month that the country has never been closer to a solution to the decades-long Kurdish issue. He also said any solution should not be left only in the hands of the government, urging for contributions from opposition parties.

Gul’s remarks were interpreted as an olive branch extended to the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, whose leader, Deniz Baykal, previously criticized the president and the government for disclosing the latest developments on the Kurdish problem.

The president gave the first hint of a resolution to the Kurdish problem while traveling to Iran in March. "Good things will happen on the Kurdish issue," he said, declining to provide details.

The announcement drew fierce reactions from the opposition parties, including the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, which argued the problem closely concerned Turkey and questioned if there were links to outside interference in the matter.

Gul also told Turkish reporters in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek.that no negotiations would be carried out with the terrorist organization PKK.

"If there is violence in one place, people even face problems in raising democratic standards," he added.