Mehmet İhsan Arslan (born 1 January 1948 in

Sason Sason is a town in the Batman Province of Turkey. It is the seat of the Sason District.İl ...

) is a Turkish businessman and politician of Kurdish origin, a founding member of the deputy for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and also a former member of the

Grand National Assembly of Turkey The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ( ), usually referred to simply as the GNAT or TBMM, also referred to as , in Turkish, is the Unicameralism, unicameral Turkey, Turkish legislature. It is the sole body given the legislative prerogatives by ...

He was a part-owner of the '' Zaman'' newspaper, and in the 1990s was Vice-President of the Islamist human rights organization '' Mazlum-Der''.derechos.org
Derechos: Human Rights Briefs Sept. 2 to Sept. 8, 1996
/ref> As such he was involved into the negotiations with the

Kurdistan Workers' Party The Kurdistan Workers' Party, or the PKK, isDespite the PKK's 12th Congress announcing plans for total organisational dissolution, the PKK has not yet been dissolved de facto or de jure. a Kurds, Kurdish militant political organization and armed ...

to achieve a release of captive Turkish soldiers and was shortly detained for this. He was elected to the Turkish parliament as a representative of Diyarbakir for the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (DEHAP) in the parliamentarian elections of 2002. He later was involved in the founding of the AKP and in the parliamentary elections in 2007 he was elected as a representative of Diyarbakir. and was denied the chance to run for re-election in 2011 by the AKP, allegedly because of his position on the Kurdish question. He was one of the architects of the AKP policies towards the Kurds, focusing on the bond of the muslim religion between the Kurds and Turks. In an interview he gave to

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

Turkey, he emphasized that the AKP policies towards the Kurds were not constructive and if Turkey wouldn't be able to solve the conflict with the

, other countries would step in. His son is Mücahit Arslan, a current parliamentarian for the AKP.

References

1948 births People from Sason Living people Deputies of Diyarbakır Justice and Development Party (Turkey) politicians Zaman (newspaper) people Democratic People's Party (Turkey) politicians {{Turkey-politician-stub