party members were banned from joining any political party for five years. These party members include: Ahmet Türk, Leyla Zana, Aysel Tuğluk, Hüseyin Kalkan, Nurettin Demirtaş, Orhan Miroğlu. Later the same day, the Presidency of the European Union released a statement, expressing concern over the Turkish court ruling, and calling upon Turkey to reform its legislation on political parties. The decision of the Constitutional Court sparked reaction among AK Party parliamentarians. Mir Dengir Mehmet Fırat said: "Turkey has become a graveyard for political parties that have been shut down. Closing political parties does not bring any benefit to Turkey. The Constitutional Court in its decision drew a parallel to the case of Batasuna in Spain, but in my opinion, that example does not really apply." Massoud Barzani, president of Iraqi Kurdistan stated "The president's office expresses its anger at the Turkish constitutional court's outlawing of the Democratic Society Party (DTP)," as hundreds of protesters gathered in Erbil, Iraq. Most of the MPs who had been in the DTP decided to join the recently formed Peace and Democracy Party. Major protests were held in Turkey against the party's ban. Pre-legislative period On 30 July 2007, the members of the DTP as a group declared in their deputy information that "Turkish is their second language." The parliament stopped the dissemination of information regarding the deputies, until the situation cleared up. The Ankara politics tried to find out the answers regarding these new members ability to follow the legislation sessions, such that 16 years ago same issue happened with Leyla Zana who said that Turkish was her second language and used the Kurdish for the parliamentary oath. In 1991, the script of the parliamentary oath included words such that "I would hold my nation high." Some members of the public questioned Leyla Zana on the grounds of which nation she had sworn to "hold high". Chairwoman Aysel Tuğluk made a statement to the press on Sunday in which she asserted, "We are here to serve our country." Legislative period On 5 November 2007, inclusion of the demand for autonomy in the six Kurdish provinces in the party program. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused the DTP of heading down a dead-end street by attempting to show Kurdish people are a minority group in Turkey. On 11 November 2007, leader Nurettin Demirtaş called on political party leaders to convene a "democracy summit". Demirtaş noted