In Turkish, we have a saying that perfectly describes what motherhood is: “if a person cries, only their mother truly feels their pain.” Fevziye Çetinkaya’s son Süleyman is 17 years old. One day, in August 2019, he left home, saying “I am going to work out,” but he never came back. “I want nothing but my son from them (referring to the HDP)” Fevziye Çetinkaya says. She shut her house located in a village, headed to Diyarbakır province with her family and is currently on vigil in front of the HDP’s provincial office.

“My son used to hang the HDP flag everywhere and take part in all the activities of the party. But now, when I ask the people in the party about my son, they say they don’t know anything” she says.  She is incensed. On the first day of her protest, she threw a stone at the HDP provincial office, leading to an altercation between the party members and the family. While Çetinkaya was shouting in fury: “I will shatter all the windows of the building if they don’t bring my son back,” the police intervened in the fight. Meanwhile, Süleyman’s cousin Aysel Bozkurt slammed the party members yelling: “Enough with your Kurdistan cause! All the young people in Diyarbakır are either in jail or death buried under the ground.” Fevziye was the second woman staging a sit-in protest for her son in front of the HDP office in Diyarbakır.

Hacire Akar, whose son joined the terror group PKK’s ranks when he was 14, learned seven years later that her son and nephew died in the mountains. When her other 21 year old son, went missing this summer, she began a  sit-in protest in front of the HDP’s Diyarbakır office saying, “Give me my son, or I will burn this place down!”. Her son was returned two days after she began protesting, and her protests were soon followed by Fevziye Çetinkaya and other families whose children were abducted by the PKK.

HDP officials deny all the accusations made by the mothers. However, this was not the first time the HDP was accused of abducting or brainwashing children to join the PKK. On April 23 2014, a picnic was ostensibly organized to celebrate National Sovereignty and Children’s Day by Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality, which was governed by the HDP (named BDP at the time). The picnic was organized in cooperation with the Mesopotamia Youth Research Center (MEGAM-DER) and the PKK terror group’s high school branch. Many children went missing during the picnic, after which around 40 families who claimed their children were abducted by the PKK kicked off a protest in front of the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality building, shouting “PKK, give our children back”.

As the number of protesting families went beyond 100 in a short period, the PKK was forced to issue a statement claiming the children were not abducted but joined the terror group of their own volition as if it was reasonable to talk about the will of children at that age. In its statement, the PKK also added that the families were being provoked by the state. Despite the pressure of the PKK and the HDP, the families continued their protests for days. In the end, some of the children escaped and returned to their families while others were sent back home by the terrorist group, however not all of the children returned.

The mothers have now been waiting for their children for months. Ayşegül Biçer, who is currently undergoing cancer treatment, is waiting for her 18-year-old son Mustafa, who has been missing for 11 months. Mustafa escaped from his home on 17 November 2018, two days later she received a phone call and learned that her son had joined the PKK’s Syrian offshoot, the People’s Protection Forces (YPG).. “There is a constantly burning fire in my soul. I’m ready to sacrifice my life; I’m dying every day. They formed a party to tear our hearts out” she said.

Remziye Akkoyun’s has one son in the mountains, two other sons in jail and her fourth son was dismissed from his job two years ago. Since September 3, 2019, she has waited for the return of her son Azad, who went up to the mountains with his friends four years ago, when he was only 10 years old. “I am very sick and exhausted. They cannot be Muslims, how can a true Muslim abduct little kids?” she asks.

Vahide Çiftçi sits next to Remziye Akkoyun on the stairs in front of the HDP office. She came from Güvenlik village located in Şemdinli district of Hakkari province. Çiftçi says: “They took away my Özlem two years ago, when she was 12,” and adds “they handed a gun to a girl child who was supposed to go to school.” Her relative Necibe Çiftçi is also with her. Necibe says that her first son was killed by the PKK in 2017 when he was 30, on the grounds that he objected to the terror group’s demands, and her second son Rojhat is currently in the PKK ranks. Rojhat and Özlem are cousins. Necibe Çiftçi addresses her son on the  TV screen: “Come here my son, they have killed your brother. Their path is wrong!” Another woman also sitting in front of the building is Hediye Begdaş, who says: “Our son disappeared on the first day of Ramadan month (May 5). Yusuf was only 16, they abducted my 16-year-old son!”

The Western media, who valorize the YPG as “freedom fighters” and ignore dozens of reports pointing to the organization’s recruitment of children in its guerilla forces, have not made a single news item on the protesting mothers in Diyarbakır. On the other hand, several individuals and institutions in Europe paid attention to the situation. The Council of Europe co-rapporteurs on local and regional democracy in Turkey; Jacob Wienen, Yoomi Renström and Stephanie Poirel, visited the mothers at the end of the first month of the protests. On the 66^th day of the sit-in protests, the Vice-Chair Tomas Zdechovsky of the European Parliament Social Affairs Committee met with the mothers in Diyarbakır. Some of the mothers talked to Zdechovsky about their resentment towards the European politicians, saying: “They abduct and kill our children as you condone these terrorists.” Salih Gökçe, one of the men holding vigil for their children, held out a photo of his sons to Zdechovsky and said: “Why did you come here? One of my sons was abducted to the mountains, and my other son is in the military. Who will be brought to account if these two happen to encounter and kill each other in the mountains? Why do you turn your back on us after your visit? Why do you keep supporting the PKK and the YPG? You should side with us to save our children.”

Salih Gökçe’s son was abducted and taken to Syria by a group of PKK militants in 2015. Gökçe immediately started looking for his son. According to his story, the militants told him that they would take him to his son if he gave 10 thousand dollars. He collected the money, went to Syria, and the militants showed him around the camps in Kobani, but they did not allow him to see his son. Today, he does not even know if his son, missing for a year and a half, is dead or alive. He also says that his son called their home from a private number and listened to the voice of his siblings without speaking.

Hüsniye Kaya, a local from Diyarbakır, is also waiting for her 19-year-old daughter Mekiye. Mekiye has been missing for five years, and Hüsniye Kaya recently learned that she is currently in Syria. Fatma Akkuş, another local from Diyarbakır, is expecting to hear from her daughter, who disappeared on 28 August 2015 when she was only 16. She saw her daughter Songül in a PKK uniform in an online video and heard that she joined the YPG forces. Şevket and Fatma Bingöl, who live in Istanbul, wait for their 19-year-old son Tuncay, who left home in 2014 saying “I’ve found a job, I’m going to my new workplace,” and never returned. Cabir Taş from Batman province joined the sit-in for her daughter Ece, who disappeared four years ago while working at a textile mill at the age of 14. Hatice Levent, who came from Kütahya province, waits for her daughter Fadime, who went missing in 2015, when she was an 18-year-old university student. İmmihan Nilifırka from Istanbul’s Sultangazi district waits for her son Mehmet, who disappeared on 21 March 2015 when he was a senior student at Ege University’s journalism department. Süheyla Demir from Ağrı’s Hamur district waits for her daughter Hayal, who went missing in 2014 while she was in the third year of high school. In addition, 83-year-old Hurinaz Omay has come to Diyarbakır from Mutki district of Bitlis province for her son who went up to the mountains 24 years ago. Her son Rıfat might be dead now, but supposing that he is alive, he would be 43 years old today. Omay says: “I will still wait. They have to give my son back, they have to bring his body back to me even if he is dead. I have searched for him for years. I went to Qandil [PKK’s headquarters] two times and to Mahmur once to no avail. But I will keep waiting.”

They have been performing their sit-in protests for more than a hundred days now. Each day they arrive at the HDP office at sunrise and return to their homes when sun sets. They are not deterred by the harsh conditions of winter or the threats by the terror group, something that Ayşegül Biçer’s husband Rauf Biçer shares: “It was the fifth day of the protests. They waited in ambush in front of our house at around 11.00 pm; the terror group’s youth branch put guns to my and my wife’s heads and threatened to kill us and our son in the mountain if we were to go back to the HDP office again; they told us ‘if your son sees what you’re doing, he will shoot himself in the head.’ They threatened us like this but we are not afraid, we are only afraid of God.”

The terror group and their supporters certainly use an iron hand in a velvet glove, and the Biçer family is not the only family to be privately threatened. The mothers performing the sit-in protests are also not the only ones waiting to hear from their children. According to talk amongst locals in Diyarbakır, the terror group killed a child of one of the protesting families as a warning to the other families. It is not certain whether this story is true or fabricated to put pressure on the families, but some of the families have been deterred by such fears and now shed tears at home. However, other mothers remain undaunted and continue to wait and protest. Following Hacire Akar, another woman Hatice Ceylan, was also reunited with her son after sitting on the stairs of the HDP building for three months. Ceylan says: “Our son has seen us on TV and he called us a few times. We tried to persuade him, finally police forces intervened and we thankfully found him”.  It is said that Ceylan’s reunion with her son Cafer, who went up to the mountains four years ago when he was receiving a hafız (memorizing the Quran) training at the age of 15, bolstered the morale of the other mothers.

Months have passed since the beginning of the sit-in protests of Kurdish mothers in front of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Diyarbakır provincial office. A reaction against the outlawed PKK responsible for abducting and recruiting their children. While the number of protesting families are now more than 50, the number of sit-in protesters increases with each passing day with new protestors joining in support of the others.

More recently, we witnessed the heart-wrenching story of 82-year-old Hurinaz Omay, a mother who has never ceased to hope. Her son was abducted by the PKK in Bitlis province 24 years ago, and she has never seen him since. Omay even went to Qandil and Mahmur, the headquarters of the PKK, twice in the hope of finding him. She sheds tears full of grief and sorrow during the later years of her life, and still dreams of finding her son no matter whether he is dead or alive. Omay says in all honestly that the HDP does not represent the Kurdish people but deceives Kurdish children into joining the PKK, clearly expressing her revolt.

For the past two months, we have been hearing many stories we have never heard of. On one side there are a slew of losses that have been hidden from the state, and on the other side there is the HDP, the real addressee of the issue, and who strive to position themselves as the political wing of the Kurdish movement. The HDP admitted its direct relation to the PKK in various statements and in many cases. More recently, the HDP deputy Leyla Güven said: “Recruitments in “guerilla forces”, conflict and war will continue as the Kurdish issue continues to persist,” revealing the HDP’s expectation of Kurdish families and their attitude towards kidnappings.

It would not be an exaggeration if we say that this civilian protest and response vocalized as “edi bese” (meaning “enough is enough” in Kurdish) was the first time the PKK and the HDP faced a loud and clear stance from their own base. Some families lost trace of their children many years ago, while others lost their children only recently. Several families whose children were kidnapped by the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), the offshoot of the PKK based in Iran, also joined the sit-in for their children. Families and parents of many military and police officers who were abducted by the PKK also joined them.

We first faced the stark truth we already knew about when Hacire Akar turned up at the doorstep of the HDP Diyarbakır office one night. Only a week later, on September 3, 2019, the movement of the families inspired by Akar turned into a collective sit-in protest. Akar’s son Mehmet returned home on August 24, giving hope to the many other families who had also lost their children. Following Hacire Akar, women like Fevziye Çetinkaya, Remziye Akkoyun and Ayşegül Biçer showed up at the HDP office and demanded the return of their children. Their resilience and resistance set an example to other mothers.

Vigil at the HDP Office

After Süleyman Çetinkaya, son of Fevziye Çetinkaya, disappeared on August 31, a member of his family said in protest: “No young people have remained in Diyarbakır because of you, they are either in grave or in prison, the hell with your Kurdistan cause!”, which shook society. The fact that this expression was uttered by a Kurdish family in Diyarbakır proved that this was the last straw. In following days, families started their hopeful wait to reunite with their children.

The Biçer family, who joined the sit-in for their 17-year-old kidnapped son, became one of the most well-known names of the protest alongside Hacire Akar. Thirty-two-year-old mother Ayşegül Biçer told the press that their son was deceived and kidnapped 11 months ago, adding that they recieved a phone call two weeks after his kidnapping and learned that their son was in the hands of the YPG terror group in Syria. During my visit to Diyarbakır on September 8, I asked all the protesting families the same question: “Your children are lost, but why are you searching for them in front of the HDP office?” The answers of all the families were alike. They said that their children started visiting the HDP office and made new friends there before they were kidnapped, and the friends they made later pretended that they had never met their children after they disappeared. The families believe that their children were brainwashed at the HDP’s Diyarbakır office.

Another couple Fevziye and Şahap Çetinkaya joined the sit-in six days after their son Süleyman disappeared. Encouraged by Hacire Akar’s story, the parents thought that their sit-in would yield a result in a short time. When asked about how their son was kidnapped, they said that Süleyman was a very keen and skilled football player and was enrolled in a local football club (the mother also added that she does not know the club’s name). The travelling costs between their village and the club was paid for by the club. One day her son left home to play football and never returned. Fevziye also said that she saw her son entering and leaving the HDP office once while she was in the city to visit a doctor. The interviews we conducted with other families on the subject verify that children have been subjected to ideological indoctrination at various events held in places like cultural centers, music schools and sports clubs, not only in Diyarbakır but in many other cities, especially in Istanbul. They have been encouraged to support the PKK and join pro-PKK meetings and marches in such social environments.

Nevertheless, the families do not give any political or ideological message. They only express a wish that this atmosphere of conflict and war be over and for their lives to be normalized, stating that they were tired of worrying about the lives of their children all the time. Ayşegül Biçer calls out to her son with these words: “Give us a call please. If you can’t come, we will pick you up. Even though you are behind the mountains, we can cross them to reach you. Just give a call, and we will be there for you.” The Biçer family also underlined that they were threatened by the PKK after they joined the sit-in protest.

A mournful mother Saliha Edizer’s son Yakup was kidnapped in 2015, when he was only 16. Saliha said that she raised her son in poverty and her only wish was to see him study. According to her, Yakup, a hardworking student who loved his school and teachers, was kidnapped by the HDP and sent to the mountain only a week before he would have completed his second year in high school. His mother cannot help but say: “My son was lying his head on his soft and clean pillow when he was at home, and he is probably lying on rocks right now, I could not stand that”. It is known that some of the children went up to the mountains after indoctrination while some of them were abducted, numbed with drugs, and used in various services of the terror group. 

Many other examples can be listed. All these painful and hopeless stories are angering. However, in our time in which everything appears as a “narrative” and perceptions precede reality, we need to meticulously reflect on this issue’s historic importance.

Mothers In Between ‘White Kurds’ and ‘White Turks’

The sit-in protests in front of the HDP Diyarbakır office are completely ad-hoc, and there is not any institution or organization behind them. Hacire Akar arrived at the doorstep of the HDP office taking every risk as a mother who has lost her son to the PKK and with nothing to lose. Until recently, publicly blaming the HDP in Diyarbakır was an act that was always wished for but never dared. As Ayşegül Biçer says, there are thousands of mothers who wish to turn up at the HDP office, but are afraid to do so.

The mothers’ protest means challenging a narrative told for years and built a supremacy of one specific discourse by the PKK and imposed on the people in the region. Thanks to this protest, they are saying: “Yes, I am protesting against you, and I no longer believe in your cause. You cannot use me, my family and my children, whom I gave birth to for the continuation of my bloodline, not for your so-called cause.”

Mothers can now clearly see that while poor Kurdish children have been wasted for nothing under a policy that was built on conflict.  These children brought up in poverty were taken away from their mothers, while at the same time the children of senior figures of the HDP enjoy their comfort in Istanbul, living very privileged lives and studying at the best schools.

The protesters are not afraid to speak out about this fact now. Celil Begdaş, who lost his 17-year-old son to the PKK, showed journalists photos of senior HDP figure Pervin Buldan’s children vacationing in Paris and London. Begdaş does not wish that his child would be able to visit a hip café in Paris, he only wishes that his son could go to a public school, have a decent job, and just live with human dignity. After years constructing a protest discourse, it is clear there is now a yawning gap between the white Kurds and the Kurdish people.

The sit-in protests in Diyarbakır are not only staged by women, fathers are also present in support of the families. However, as Hacire Akar, Ayşegül Biçer and Fevziye Çetinkaya came to the fore in the media, the protests are mostly attributed to mothers. If their protest were against the state, they would have been supported by white Turks, secularists and those who lecture on women’s rights. Then such a protest would be documented by the foreign press and followed across the world.

But unfortunately, those who portray the YPJ’s underage girl fighters as heroes of freedom do not want to see Hacire Akar’s vigil at the HDP office. Women right’s lecturers would like to draw a picture of a homogenous “Kurdish women’s movement” which reiterates a specific role attributed to the activism of Kurdish women since the 1990s. There is a trend of valorizing, romanticizing and glorifying the Kurdish women’s movement, which has been politicized so far only in a specific framework.

However, women who go beyond the limits of the activism that has been deemed suitable for them,  or beyond the roles given to them in politics, women klike Hacire Akar who take steps to solve their own problems on their own terms, using their own methods and agenda are ignored as they do not serve certain interests. Hacire Akar’s revolt and her exclaimation of “edi bese” is not seen as being a part of women’s activism since it does not fit into the general framework of a homogenized women’s movement which is attached to the leftist ideology.

Kurdish women are treated like a “homogenous mass” and are mostly associated with extremely conventional codes, local clothes, lack of education and means, and “honor killings” with the exception of educated and secular Kurdish women leaders. On the other hand, with their clothing and Marxist-Leninist ideologies, Kurdish women in politics are not representing Kurdish culture; they only determine how the true representatives would be positioned. Besides, they do not represent the political discourse woven from the pain of people. They only represent a movement that fed on people’s grief for 40 years, could not burgeon in Turkey despite foreign support and the support from the European public, and responded violently to the AKP government that took a step to resolve the issue in 2012.

The children who were born and grew up over the course of this time are neither representatives nor addressees of the pain they legitimized. They are drifting in a whirlwind of Kurdish nationalism, unhappiness, nihilism and conflict that does not end in the minds of their “white” children who were born and raised in metropolitan cities. The HDP’s women, who also suffered losses during early periods of the movement and have been in the fight, do not have anything to give to Kurdish mothers other than conflict and sorrow. While building and leading their own lives, they could not give Kurdish mothers anything but poverty, loss of children and despair.

Kurdish Women

The losses, grief, and violations of rights during the 1990s ascribed a certain identity to Kurdish women in their own communities and public sphere. This identity was inevitably against the state due to the circumstances of that time. In this framework, all kinds of violation of rights and attacks on ethnic and religious identities experienced in Turkey throughout the 1990s turned into political movements in the following years for the members of the aggrieved communities. In this sense, the headscarf ban and Kurdish question shared some similarities. 

The activism of Kurdish women, who became active agents in the Kurdish political movement, came to the fore and gained a symbolic character during these years. The most talked-about and most sympathized feature of the entire Kurdish movement has been women’s activism within the movement. In this sense, one of the greatest achievements of the Kurdish political movement during the early 2000s was mobilizing Kurdish women, who were made to join the rallies, meetings and marches of the movement with their local clothes. I am saying they were “made to join” since I believe that the women at the base of the Kurdish political movement never had any real agency through a principle of reciprocity which would allow them to transform the movement in line with their own pain.  This separatist movement, which has a rigid structure and is based on a radical Marxist-Leninist ideology with strong intellectual side, has never treated these women equally although they defended equal citizenship and equal rights at a discourse level.

In the 1990s, identity politics became prominent across the world. People around the world tried to liberate their identities, ethnicities and religious allegiances from the pressure of nation states, and the women’s movement gained strength parallel to this. In Turkey, the women’s movement was also mobilized during these years and the Kurdish women’s movement could easily find an audience in this trend. Thus, they became increasingly visible in the public sphere, took on active roles in political parties, spoke in rallies and opened a space for themselves.

But did all these actors visible in the public sphere really represent Kurdish women? While opening such a new space, did those acting on behalf of Kurdish women change the movement in a way to meet the needs of the women at the movement’s base? I have to say that this critical question remains unanswered, and I should also add that such a question has never been asked since asking such a thing would cause anger. Has the movement that abducted the older son of Hacire Akar done anything to prevent her second son from going down the same path? What has this movement given to Hacire Akar for 40 years? Which problems has it solved, what kind of a difference has it made?

What kind of connection is there between the educated, secular, leftist Kurdish women activists who speak many foreign languages fluently and women like Hacire Akar, who were not sent to school, do not speak Turkish and cannot travel on their own? Who is the real representative of Kurdish identity, and who speaks on behalf of this identity?

Nothing has changed in the lives of these women who have patiently waited for years, lost their children, and inherited the ongoing pain of generations from their mothers. They waited for decades without even saying good-bye to their beloved sons. Their opinions have never been asked, and it does not even matter to the movement if these mothers consent to the roles ascribed to them.

When these women, the true representatives of Kurdish culture, appeared and exclaimed: “We want our children!” they confronted the educated female parliament members and politicians who told them to continue fanning the flames of the conflict. The latter consists of a group of privileged women who owe their existence to the pain of the former. Female Kurdish politicians are throwing other children into the fire while protecting their own children from conflict and radicalization. This is what Kurdish women are deemed worthy of by the Kurdish women’s movement that has been valorized for years. These mothers are now ignored since they say “edi bese” and want their children back from Qandil and Mahmur.

 *This article was penned by Meryem Ilayda Atlas and first published in Turkish in Kriter Magazin’s October issue. 

Last week, Hacire Akar started a sit-in protest in front of the HDP building in Diyarbakir. Akar claimed that her 22 year-old-son, Mehmet, had been kidnapped by the PKK. She continued her protest until her son was brought to her. Her determination encouraged other mothers to make their voices heard, with many mothers starting their own protests to bring back their sons and daughters kidnapped by the PKK.

Indeed, it is not the first time that mothers took part in a protest to uncover the fate of their children abducted and recruited by the PKK. There had been an earlier wave of protests in 2014 but it did not create much public awareness at that time. The current protests, on the other hand, have attracted the attention of the masses, and the child recruitment practices of the PKK, considered a war crime, has become a topical issue in Turkey. 

It is a well-known fact that one of the main targets of the PKK are underage people. Because the emotional attachment of those recruited at the early age is more powerful, they are recruited as child soldiers especially for front-line combat.

The research on OECD countries shows that the average age of recruitment in the PKK is almost 20. However, other research shows that the average age decreases to 17 when only women are taken into consideration. When it comes to education, it is seen that the education level of younger recruits is very low.

Since the peak period of recruitment of the PKK that took place from 1990 to 1994, the target group of this terrorist organization has been underage people coming from low-income families. This group was vulnerable, and it was difficult for these families to protect their children from the influence of the PKK. After their children from these families are recruited, they are brainwashed and trained in accordance with the aims of the organization.

What is the function of child recruits in the PKK? It is known that children are in the most disadvantaged positions in the PKK hierarchy. They are mostly used in the front line during military attacks and underage female recruits are especially trained for suicide bombing missions. Since the case of Zeynep Kınacı in 1996, most of the suicide missions of the PKK have been conducted by young women.

Because of these reasons, the sit-in protests of mothers in Diyarbakir is very valuable to break the long-lasting domination of the PKK over families and children. Raising awareness of the PKK’s child recruits may create positive outcomes and families may play a more crucial role in protecting their children from the PKK propaganda. If families in the region become more conscious on this threat, they make their children and other families aware of it. In the end, this awareness may cause the decline of the PKK’s power.

Thus, the mass protest by the families, whose children were abducted and recruited by the PKK, may become a game changer in the fight against terrorism. At this point, it is also necessary to pay the attention to this issue at the national level. Not only political parties, but also NGOs, academics, and all public figures should realize the potential of the sit-in protests in ending the PKK’s domination over children.

49-year-old Hacire Akar, a mother of eight children from Diyarbakır province, was one day called by PKK militants. They told her that her son was killed and she should take his body. According to Akar, her son Fırat was abducted by the terror group in 2004, when he was only 14.

The PKK, on the other hand, claim that he joined the group of his own volition, just like all the other children recruited by the PKK as if it made any sense speaking of a 14-year-old’s choice. She was also informed about the death of another son two years ago, when he was 27 years old. Then, her nephew joined the terror group and was killed afterwards.

Last week, Akar sat in front of the HDP Diyarbakır Provincial Office, and cried: “Give me my son! Or I will burn this place down and suffer all consequences!” She asked: “Why have you taken three people from one household? Why have you wasted those three? They took my children, and then called me to take their dead bodies.”

Akar staged a sit-in protest in front of the HDP office on the grounds that her 21-year-old son Mehmet Akar was abducted only a few days before his wedding. Obviously, the terror group was disturbed by the outcry of a Kurdish mother in Diyarbakır and the public reaction in support of her.

Upon this, a pro-PKK media outlet Mesopotamia Agency contacted Mehmet Akar, who was previously unreachable. A video of Mehmet Akar speaking was then broadcasted, although it was obvious from the tone of his speech that he memorized the text by force. In the video he says that the claims of his abduction were not true and that he fled his house because he did not want to marry. “It has nothing to do with the HDP. It is wrong for my family to stand there. I’ve already told them that I wrote them off from my life. They should not blame anyone, because I left home by my own will,” he says in the video.

It is not known whether Fırat Akar was abducted by the PKK or joined the group of his own volition, but everyone, including his mother, was certain that he was with the PKK. The video shared by the Mesopotamia Agency also verified this. Akar continued her protest in front of the HDP Diyarbakır office: “They take the youth in and send them to the mountains by numbing them with drugs. The HDP is the centerpiece of this oppression. I am tearing my heart here at this evening hour while everyone else is at their homes. Why am I here?”

“They take the youth in and send them to the mountains by numbing them with drugs. The HDP is the centerpiece of this oppression. I am tearing my heart here at this evening hour while everyone else is at their homes. Why am I here?”

The reverberations of the protest grew and finally made it to the headlines of all national TV channels and newspapers. Hacire Akar continued to shed light on the issue by giving an example from her own life. Addressing the HDP politicians, especially female HDP members, she said: “Why is no one siding with me? They are saying ‘we’re all mothers, and we suffer a lot.’ But they are lying. I see hypocrisy. Their children can freely go on with their lives. But I’m here, and my son is no longer with me. Why would my son kill innocent people?”

It is really curious that not a single HDP politician showed any effort to comfort Akar. The same politicians who always speak using the slogan: “Mothers’ tears should stop”.  Are they not informed about the children and youth manipulated by the PKK?

The answers could be found in a book entitled Bizim Gizli Bir Hikâyemiz Var (We Have A Secret Story) written by Berivan Bingöl, a doctor from Bingöl province, and published by İletişim Publications in 2016. The book compiles the stories of 20 women who left the PKK. The sub-heading of the book is “Women from Mountains to Motherhood”. The book is briefly described as a work of memory and confrontation. A graduate from Ankara Gazi University School of Medicine, Bingöl has worked on rights violations in many non-governmental organizations including the Turkish Medical Association, Foundation for Society and Legal Studies and Human Rights Foundation of Turkey. I would like to quote some accounts of the women from the book:

Rojda: “I still see in my dreams that I am in a clash on the mountain. My children are also with me in my dreams, I try to protect them, hide them… The fear of losing them is ingrained in my soul. I find myself soaking wet with sweat when I wake up.”

Sorxwîn: “Some say that we should move to Turkey. But how could we? Imagine that my child starts going to school in Turkey and meets the child of a killed military officer. How can I ensure my child’s safety? I am here for ten years now (in Duhok), and none of my neighbors know that I was on the mountains back then.”

Zınarîn: “My daughter always brags about me, saying that ‘my mom is a Kurdish police’. But when she finds out that I have been in the middle of a real war, she will probably ask whether I have killed anyone. So many people are asking me this question, and I don’t even know how to answer. You can never be sure about which reality you will stick to. I wish some facts could be told open-heartedly in this world so that we could get them off our chest, I wish everything could come to light. I don’t believe in any religion and I tell my friends that if only there was a judgment day, so that I could confront everyone.”

Hebûn: “I often dream that I am in a battlefield with my child, who is in my hands in the midst of all the chaos and fighting. I am very afraid that something might happen to him, and I ask myself in the dream how I have ended up there again.”

Serdil: “I spent thirteen years on the mountain. Now I am even scared of the mention of wars although it is ironic to look at it like an anti-militarist organization member who has never experienced a war. I used to be in the field, looking to kill, and I am shocked at the thought of that today. I think every creature deserves to live their own life. This is my current standpoint.”

Rojda: “I talk to my therapist about how many attacks I joined. But I am always trying to look out for my kids in my dreams, I am always trying to save them. I talk about those dreams to my therapist, asking for her advice. She smiles and says: ‘There is nothing to do. You cannot easily get rid of this mental state.’”

What are the difference between these teenagers and the teenagers joining Daesh? The PKK does not abstain from organizing horrendous terror attacks, using suicide bombers, smuggling arms and drugs, engaging in intra-organizational killing, and all kinds of torture.

According to the accounts of the 20 women interviewed for the book, almost all of them went to the mountains when they were very young. The one leaving her home at the youngest age was 13. Most of them began this path with great excitement but ended up with resentment. They think that their choices might have been different had they felt the way they feel today. They could sympathize with their mothers and truly understand their pain only after they became mothers themselves. Now they filled with the anxiety with the fear that their children might also want to follow a similar path in the future. One of the women even says that she will never let her child be away from her, let alone go up to the mountains.

They have also understood the pain of other mothers throughout this process. One of them says: “While we were in the organization, we would approach people very rudely without understanding them. We were forgetting that they also had mothers. We destroyed the dreams of mothers while we were chasing our own dreams. Unfortunately, some dreams end at the point where other dreams start. We went up to the mountains by killing those left behind.”

These are the accounts of former PKK militants. But what about the ones in politics? Hacire Akar rightfully protested that no women from the HDP sided with her, and ended up breaking some windows of the party building in rage. No HDP deputy or mayor has children actively fighting for the PKK on the mountains although they have other relatives there. They know about the stories of all the women who started a new life after leaving the organization. They also know what it means to join the PKK. They do not have the courage to face Hacire Akar but they attend the funerals of young PKK militants in the name of politics. They glorify those dying or killing for the organization even if they are only 14 or 15 year olds or suicide bombers. This is exactly how ideologies work; they make people blind, conceited and egoistic. They make people mere spectators to the pain of others.

What are the difference between these teenagers and the teenagers joining Daesh? What makes the PKK different from other terror groups? As is already known, the PKK does not abstain from organizing horrendous terror attacks, using suicide bombers, smuggling arms and drugs, engaging in intra-organizational killing, and all kinds of torture. What is their difference from other terror groups if they are sending suicide bombers to the busiest streets in Ankara and Istanbul? There isn’t any.

Hacire Akar’s fight finally yielded results. Mehmet Akar returned to his mother. But what about all the soldiers who lost their lives while fighting against the PKK? And their mothers, wives, and children? The following is an account of another woman interviewed for the book:

“We were in Çirav region of Gabar in 1994. (…) Zana was moaning, losing blood. Rengîn said that there was a voice down there, and it could be one of our friends. We walked down the path to find out the source of the voice, and saw a wounded soldier covered in blood. He leaned against a rock, and blood was pouring down his throat. When Rengîn hollered at him, he opened his eyes and gulped when he saw us. I think he regretted seeing us, two female ‘terrorists’. I approached him and asked: ‘How are you?’. His condition was serious, he could hardly breathe. Rengîn doused a napkin and wiped his face. It was obvious that he was a hopeless case. The soldier pointed to his pocket with his hand. There was a letter and a photo in his pocket, the photo of a little blond girl in a blue dress, who was around three or four. “Esmanur” was written in the back of the photo. I asked if she was his daughter, and he nodded, smiling vaguely. When I held the letter, he waited a little and then said ‘Read’, a word written in all ancient documents. On that day, this word was uttered in the unnamed rocky areas of Çirav, for the people of two different worlds. I began reading the letter, it was written by his wife, who penned her longing, worries and good wishes. His head fell before I finished reading…”

Hacire Akar’s struggle to take back her son encouraged other mothers too. Fevziye Çetinkaya, a mother who claims her son was abducted and taken to the mountains by the PKK, is following her example. Like Akar, Çetinkaya launched a sit-in protest in front of the HDP Diyarbakır Provincial Office. Now, Kurdish mothers whose children were abducted by the PKK are encouraging each other to take their children back, and are asking the HDP, the civilian wing of the PKK, instead of cursing the PKK at home.

The Turkish Ministry of Interior announced that the mayors of Diyarbakır, Van, and Mardin were discharged because of their engagement with the PKK terrorist organization. According to the Ministry’s official statement, the mayors are being charged with: re-employing former municipal employees who have been dismissed due to their liaison with the PKK terrorist organization; allowing persons to illegally work in municipalities, persons who were formerly elected as municipal councilors from the HDP but were not given the official mandate because of their affiliation with the PKK; naming streets after PKK terrorists; allowing the PKK march to be performed in official meetings of the municipalities, and changing the administrative structure of municipalities by appointing co-chairpersons that, by rule, breaches the current administrative law.

Based on these grounds, three mayors; Ahmet Turk of Mardin, Selcuk Mizrakli of Diyarbakir, and Bedia Ertan of Van, were discharged and the governors of these provinces were appointed as new mayors. Since this issue is currently at the top of the agenda for all political parties, it is crucial to evaluate how they reflected this incident and why they reacted differently.

It is possible to classify the reactions to these developments into three groups: supporters consisting of the AK Party and the MHP, opponents consisting of the CHP and the HDP, and the relatively-neutral Iyi Party. The supporters of this decision underline that it is crucial for Turkey to strengthen the fight against terrorism. In accordance with this aim, Turkey should not allow any activity supporting terrorist groups or legitimizing their existence.

Even the opponents of the trustee appointments do not deny the affiliation between the HDP municipalities and the PKK.

“We will not allow any money of Turkey’s people to go to terrorist organizations. And we will not sit back and watch those, who use the money of our people to help terrorists,” stated President Erdogan.

Indeed, even the opponents of this incident do not deny the affiliation between the HDP municipalities and the PKK, since the HDP itself does not hide this. One of the most concrete examples of this affiliation was during the official inauguration ceremonies of these municipalities. During the official ceremony in Diyarbakir, the national anthem of Turkey was not allowed to be sung, and instead the PKK’s march was performed. Furthermore, a moment of silence for dead PKK members took place. Relatives of people killed by the PKK were also fired in all of these municipalities.

On the other side, the opponents of these developments state that the trustee appointments are against the democratic rule and the will of the people. CHP officials visited the discharged mayors and showed them their support. The party underlines that these mayors should not be discharged without a judicial decision. Indeed, this process seems to have resulted in a further rapprochement between the CHP and the HDP since the reaction of both parties to this issue are the same.

Nevertheless, the CHP’s alliance partner Iyi Party stayed relatively neutral during the process. Unlike the CHP’s Chairman Kılıçdaroğlu, the Iyi Party’s leader Meral Akşener did not make any comments.. Nonetheless, the Iyi Party’s spokesperson made an official statement and underlined that although respect for the will of the people is crucial for democratic rule, affiliations with terrorist activities and organizations should not be allowed.

Iyi Party’s relatively neutral stance and the further rapprochement between the CHP and HDP on this issue might be signaling a change in the balance of power among the CHP-HDP-Iyi Party political bloc. Thus, the reflections of Turkey’s opposition parties on the appointment of trustees may point to the future directions of these parties in their domestic political agendas.

Ovacık, a small district in a far corner of Turkey, has been a popular place all over Turkey since 2014. This is certainly due to the fact that the district mayor has been Turkey’s one and only mayor from the Communist Party. While the word “communist” was accepted as derogatory for years in Turkey, a neighbor of USSR and a NATO ally since 1952, even the honey produced in Ovacık is today called “communist honey” thanks to former Ovacık Mayor Fatih Mehmet Maçoğlu’s performance. Of course, in this context, the word does not refer to an ideology but is rather employed as a symbol, a trademark for the district. Finally, Maçoğlu was elected as the mayor of Tunceli province thanks to his successful performance in Ovacık. He is now the mayor of a city with a population of 90 thousand.  

Soon as he was elected Ovacık mayor, Maçoğlu encouraged the production of organic chickpeas, beans and honey in the district, of which the population is around 3 thousand. The products were put up for sale on the municipality’s website through a cooperative formed by the municipality. As Maçoğlu claims, he procured Turkey’s best quality honey that contains 216 thousand different minerals from its producers and marketed it in all 81 provinces of Turkey under the guidance of the municipality. An average of 3 tons of honey was sold per day. Maçoğlu says: “We introduced the natural honey produced on Dersim Mountains, Munzur foothills and highlands as ‘communist honey.’ They are calling from all 81 provinces, including Çanakkale, Trabzon, Rize, Mardin, Isparta and Istanbul, asking ‘Is there any communist honey?’ Even bees got used to us, they’ve become communists!”

Also, a ton of chickpeas and a ton of dried beans are sold per day under the guidance of the municipality. This is one of the most acclaimed activities of Maçoğlu since he gave scholarships to students with the income earned from the sales of chickpeas and beans sown in public lands. The communist mayor added 10 thousand bookshelves and 2 libraries in the municipality building. Unlike his peers, Maçoğlu does not use an official car, but drives his own car or uses public transportation. The municipality was in debt when he came to office, and throughout his term in office, he paid the debts and did not borrow any money. In January every year, he publicly announced the annual profit-loss account statement of the municipality on the municipality’s website and on a giant placard hung on the municipality building.

While endorsing the CHP’s mayor candidates in the west of Turkey, the HDP pursued propaganda in Tunceli by accusing Maçoğlu of being a Kemalist and a CHP supporter.

After this successful performance, Maçoğlu ran for Tunceli municipality and was elected as the new mayor of Tunceli. Born in 1968 in Ovacık, Maçoğlu is a laboratorian. While working as a health officer in Tunceli State Hospital’s emergency service, he quitted his job and ran for Ovacık municipality. His opponent was the previous mayor Mustafa Sarıgül, who won from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in the 2009 local election, but eventually passed to the Peace and Democracy Party (the former name of today’s Peoples’ Democratic Party-HDP) by resigning from the CHP in 2013 to protest the party’s approach to the reconciliation process and the constitutional drafting process.

In the latest local election, Maçoğlu’s biggest opponent was an HDP candidate. He became a candidate from the Turkish Communist Party with the endorsement of Socialist Assemblies Federation, while the HDP formed the Revolutionary Force Union by allying with three other parties. The HDP harshly attacked its opponent in Tunceli. According to former CHP deputy Hüseyin Aygün’s tweet before the election, HDP said the following while attacking its opponent: “You are the new trustee of Dersim. You are a Kemalist, your victory will only favor the CHP. Continue your chickpeas-beans communism in Ovacık. You made the headlines in Sözcü (a radical Kemalist newspaper in Turkey). You are a Kemalist, not a communist. AK Party (the ruling Justice and Development Party) will win if you run for the election.” While endorsing the CHP’s mayor candidates in the west of Turkey, the HDP pursued propaganda in Tunceli by accusing Maçoğlu of being a Kemalist and a CHP supporter. Despite all, the party failed to sabotage the popular support Maçoğlu enjoys.

When Maçoğlu was elected as mayor on the night of March 31, he tweeted “People of Dersim have won.” If you ask why he articulated the former name of the province instead of saying Tunceli, or why the HDP accused him of being a Kemalist and CHP supporter as if they were insults, the answers are long. But to answer briefly, CHP changed Dersim’s name as Tunceli in 1935, where the majority of the population are Kurdish and Alevi. This change was announced as: “The last seedbed of feudalism is being removed. As in every corner of Turkish community, a new spirit of civilization and progress will prevail in Tunceli from now on.” Just as the West named its colonial practices beginning from the 19th century as a “civilizing mission,” the Kemalist ideology in Turkey undertook a similar “mission” that can be characterized as social engineering.

When Maçoğlu was elected as mayor on the night of March 31, he tweeted “People of Dersim have won.” Saying Dersim instead of Tunceli had deeper historical connotations.

Since the rulers of the Kemalist ideology borrowed their body of knowledge from the West, they attempted to shape society with a “civilizing mission” in a self-orientalist reflex. When things did not go as they wished, they “civilized” people by using force. The operation that claimed more than 13 thousand lives in Dersim about 81 years ago (around 1937-38) was also considered a civilizing mission. Aside from all the casualties, leaders of 5 tribes, including Seyit Rıza, were executed; while the surviving girls were given out for adoption by the state. In 1927 and 1935, censuses were conducted in Dersim. So, according to the archives collected by Necmettin Sahir Sılan, who was a bureaucrat at the time, the state used to know all the details about the population in Dersim. Dersim sent a total of 6 deputies to the First Parliament that fought the national war of independence. Sabiha Gökçen, Kemal Atatürk’s adopted daughter and the first female fighter pilot of Turkey, was also among the leading names of the Dersim operation.

And one day in 2011, the “Dersim incident,” described as “the secret everybody knows about,” was confronted as part of Turkey’s collective memory. Then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said: “If an apology is needed on behalf of the state, I apologize,” and urged CHP Chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to apologize on behalf of his party, which was ruling Turkey at the time. However, upon a question on the subject during a university talk, Kılıçdaroğlu said: “I don’t think this incident must be remembered as the darkest tragedy of the Republican history.” During those days, CHP deputy Gülsün Bilgehan Toker, the granddaughter of late İsmet İnönü, gave a response that put CHP ideology in a nutshell: “If the girls of Dersim had not been given out for adoption, they would have remained in Medieval times. At the homes they were sent to, they were brought up very well, learned to set dinner tables very well,” and added: “The current chairman of the CHP was born and raised in Dersim, which is the biggest success of the Republic.” 

According to the PKK terrorist organization’s media outlets, last week was PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s birthday. On this occasion, the PKK’s umbrella group – the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) – released a statement for those in prison who died during hunger strikes and for those that are continuing their hunger strikes in retaliation against Ocalan’s isolation in prison: “Leyla Guven, our comrades in dungeons and all across Europe are sacrificing their lives to pay back the leader Apo, who led to their actual birth.”

Of course, the statement does not say anything about how many lives it takes to “pay back.” But since being an Ocalan proponent means birth to them, the door is open to all supporters of the PKK and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). The statement continues, “Today, Kurdish women and youth are sacrificing their lives for Apo because of his contributions to women and youth. This reality goes for all Kurdish people, especially women and youth.” So, according to this peculiar reasoning, Kurdish people must die for Ocalan. However, apparently this rule does not apply to senior PKK figures such as Cemil Bayik, Duran Kalkan, and Murat Karayilan. These three seem to be “paying back” by encouraging death and murder instead of sacrificing themselves. Surely, there are various types of pay back in the organization.

Kurdish people must die for Ocalan. However, this rule does not apply to senior PKK figures such as Cemil Bayik, Duran Kalkan, and Murat Karayilan. These three seem to be “paying back” by encouraging death and murder instead of sacrificing themselves.

For instance, Selahattin Demirtas’s brother, Nurettin Demirtas, declared Seher Cagla Demir – (codename Doga – meaning nature in Turkish), also the perpetrator of the suicide attack in Ankara three years ago, which killed 36 civilians and left 349 injured, as a “hero.” In an article he wrote for Yeni Özgür Politika, he said: “Doğa is Heracles. Some people distort the subject by claiming that we valorize death and organize suicide attacks like Daesh. Doğa cannot be associated with death or suicide attacks. She is a hero, a lotus flower who cannot be stained by any means.”

Another example is from former Member of Parliament Sabahat Tuncel, who is currently paying back to Ocalan according to the terror group’s formula, in prison. She was also of the opinion that HDP owed to the PKK militants organizing suicide attacks. As can be remembered, she publicly praised the PKK militant Zeynep Kınacı, who walked into a group of soldiers during a flag-raising ceremony in Tunceli with explosives wrapped around her abdomen, pretending to be pregnant, and blew herself up, leaving 8 soldiers dead and 29 wounded. Tuncel said: “We owe our current freedom and political presence to this fight and friends like her. We must see her suicide against the system as part of our own fight.”

Following the HDP’s Hakkari deputy Leyla Güven and the statements issued by senior PKK names, six PKK proponents have died, or paid back to borrow the terror group’s discourse, as a result of hunger strikes or suicide. According to HDP Law and Human Rights Committee Spokesperson and Batman deputy Ayşe Acar Başaran, the 335 convicts who started hunger strikes as of 16 December, 2018 are currently in critical condition. According to the terror group, these 335 people are about to pay back their debt soon!

According to HDP Law and Human Rights Committee Spokesperson and Batman deputy Ayşe Acar Başaran, the 335 convicts who started hunger strikes as of 16 December, 2018 are currently in critical condition. For the PKK terror group, these 335 people are about to pay back their debt to Öcalan soon!

A European delegation with persons coming from Germany, Sweden, England, France and Norway were in southeast Turkey last week to observe the local election. They paid support visits to the “heroes,” including Leyla Güven. Each of them said that the isolation of Öcalan must end as it does not have any justification on humanitarian or legal terms. But none of them mentioned the terror group’s atrocities. None of them asked why the group does not end the hunger strikes and keeps calling people to die.

None of them issued even a tepid criticism to the endless obedience and submission of mayors and deputies, who used the means of civil politics to have their offices, to this brutal terror group. None of them spoke on the mothers shedding tears for their children abducted or recruited by the terror group. They also seem to accept PKK’s formula: Those not supporting the PKK are not Kurdish, only the PKK and HDP proponents are Kurdish, and they “owe” their identity to the organization and thus each one of them is a potential “hero.” Besides, this is only one aspect of PKK’s innumerable atrocities. I am not even referring to the thousands of civilians and Turkish and Kurdish soldiers who lost their lives in the terror group’s attacks. Looked through this lens, the positions of heroes and the indebted will become even more complicated adding the countries supporting the terror group. This is the true nature of violence and atrocity.

Turkey had one of its most significant local elections yesterday. The agenda of the elections was more about national or even international issues rather than local matters. According to the unofficial election results, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has once again come first in the elections, as it has done in every single election since 2002. Nevertheless, the party, while preserving its votes in the national scale, seems to have lost the capital Ankara while Istanbul results are so close that I am sure there will be some recounting. As this column mostly focuses on the Kurdish question, my take on the elections will be about the cities where Turkey’s Kurds live densely.

With respect to the Kurdish question, and hence, AK Party – HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) competition in the eastern and southeastern cities, the results are quite promising – if not an overwhelming glory, for the AK Party. For one thing, AK Party has retained all cities under its rule except for Erzincan, where it lost to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), not the HDP. Elazığ, Erzurum, Malatya, Muş, Bingöl, Gaziantep, Kilis, Şanlıurfa, Adıyaman, all were retained by AK Party, most of them with quite big margins.

AK Party has not lost a single city to the HDP while gaining Ağrı, Bitlis, and Şırnak back from the HDP. This is a straightforward win.

AK Party has not lost a single city to the HDP while gaining Ağrı, Bitlis, and Şırnak back from the HDP. This is a straightforward win for AK Party vis-a-vis the HDP given that the HDP has so far never lost a city municipality where it was in power. What makes it more impressive is that it is not a small shift of votes that enabled the AK Party to win in those cities. It was quite a big shift. The AK Party, according to unofficial results, received 56% of the votes in Ağrı where it only got 38% in 2014. It increased its votes from 40 to 44, and, most dramatically in Şırnak from 17 to 62 percent. The HDP, on the other hand, lost its vote share in most of places even where it usually came first. The HDP also lost Tunceli to the Turkey Communist Party (TKP) while coming first in Kars where the MHP was holding the municipality.

The AK Party won multiple towns that were under HDP control since 2014. Most striking examples are from Hakkari and Şırnak where the HDP used to come first with big margins.

Apart from these cities, the AK Party also won multiple towns that were under HDP control (under the BDP banner) since 2014. Most striking examples are from Hakkari and Şırnak where the HDP used to come first with big margins. While the AK Party seems to have won Derecik, Şemdinli and Çukurca in Hakkari, it also obtained Uludere and Beytüşşebap in Şırnak, all from the HDP. Overall, the AK Party has won four districts out of seven in Şırnak and three out of five in Hakkari. Diyarbakır, on the other hand, did not let the AK Party to win a victory in the city other than Çermik and Hani districts. Nevertheless, in pretty much all the cities of the region, even in places where the HDP came first, the AK Party has increased the number of municipal districts it won.

These results, overall, suggest that AK Party is the winner in Turkey’s eastern cities. The HDP, on the other hand, lost many municipalities it had won in 2014. While the party had gained 10 cities and 67 districts in 2014, the numbers respectively fell to 8 lost its vote share in most of the places and 50 districts in 2019. Hence, it lost 2 cities and 17 towns in the region, almost entirely to the AK Party. These results show that neither the AK Party’s electoral alliance with the nationalist MHP nor the trustee appointments resulted in a decrease in the party’s votes in the region. Quite the opposite, the AK Party increased its votes in the region and this tells us that the AK Party’s stiff counterterrorism measures against the PKK have also damaged the PKK’s political wing, the HDP.

Turkey’s local elections will take place this Sunday. With this piece right before the elections, I would like to stress once again the most controversial component of the Nation Alliance, namely the HDP. It is well-known that Western media outlets deliberately disregard the Kurdish-nationalist HDP’s obvious ties to the PKK terrorist organization. The most salient feature of HDP’s strategy for the local elections is the tacit character of the alliance they have joined. Neither the HDP representatives nor their allied parties have the courage to openly and publicly state this alliance, ironically due to possible criticisms to be received from their voter bases.

Turkey held its previous local elections in 2014 when the HDP seemed to be in favor of solving the “Kurdish issue” by allegedly persuading the PKK terrorist organization to give up its arms, stop terrorist attacks, and leave Turkish territory. However, this did not happen and in contrary, the PKK started its bloody attacks in various Turkish cities subsequent to the June 2015 elections. The HDP did not criticize these attacks and made efforts to discredit the government by spreading false information.

The upcoming local elections in Turkey will be the first after it became obvious that the HDP is just acting in line with and on behalf of the PKK. It’s worthwhile to be on the watch for the election results in the eastern part of the country on the evening of 31 March.

It is difficult for any rational mind to believe the PKK’s narrative that the Turkish government started the fight  as a reaction to the HDP’s “success” subsequent to the June 2015 elections. This argument clearly disregards the unwillingness of the PKK to dissolve itself or to leave Turkey. Discussing this point further and further is a waste of time because of the continuing pre-designated stance by the HDP and PKK supporters against the Turkish government. Moreover, it’s almost impossible to conduct a reasonable debate with obvious supporters and admirers of a terrorist leader such as Abdullah Ocalan/Kurdish left-nationalists and also with Turkish Marxists who are sympathetic to the HDP – just due to one dominant reason, namely, of having a personal or ideological “problem” with President Erdogan. One must also not forget that between 2014-2016, many HDP-led municipalities openly supported the PKK’s ambitions in certain cities and even provided financial and logistic support. Although Western media outlets do not address these issues, it is also a known stance that HDP politicians do not accept the PKK as a terrorist organization.

Foreign observers should keep in mind that these will be the first local elections right after it became obvious that the HDP is just acting in line with and on behalf of, the PKK. In this context, the electorate’s decision, particularly in the Eastern part of Turkey, should be watched on the evening of 31 March by considering the previous period of 2015-2019.

There is also an obvious and general weirdness regarding the HDP as a political party per se. Although the party is based on an electorate partly consisting of Kurdish nationalists, along with culturally conservative reflexes, the party is mistakenly perceived as a leftist-secular democratic party. This perception is above all boosted by Turkish leftist journalists, intellectuals, and academics, who were previously oriented in radical Marxist and socialist circles. However, presenting the HDP as a main supporter of universal human rights is mere ultimate wishful thinking.

HDP is perceived as a leftist-secular democratic party chiefly by Turkish leftist journalists, intellectuals, and academics, who were previously oriented in radical Marxist and socialist circles. 

In such cases, it is perhaps usual for Western observes that are “left-biased” and secular journalists, who are also absurdly uncritical of the authoritarian-exclusive Kemalist ideology, to applaud and praise the former chairman of the HDP without any criticism regarding his separatist ambitions, his playing down of PKK terrorism, his sympathy to jailed PKK leader Ocalan, and his general ambivalent stances, such as even considering to form a coalition with nationalist MHP (in 2015). As mentioned above, besides foreign media representatives lacking analyses, there are also some Turkish voices who disregard all these facts by regularly creating a false image.

Another point that must be mentioned is HDP’s ambivalent stance and bias in order to collaborate with Turkish political parties, which have very different ideological perceptions. It seems that a certain kind of hatred with regard to current government cadres reached a new peak. Actually, the Kurdish-nationalist HDP was eager to establish a coalition government right after the June 2015 election, when Kemalist-secular CHP invited HDP and the nationalist MHP to form a coalition. MHP chairman rejected these ambitions while CHP chairman Kilicdaroglu did not have any problem with collaborating with the HDP.

Similarly, the CHP has established a de facto alliance with the HDP for the upcoming 31 March local elections. Former HDP chairman recently declared that the HDP will support CHP and Iyi Party candidates in the West. But the question should follow: What did these two parties promise the HDP in order to receive such support? No representative from either party is ready or has any courage to answer this question. But this does not exclude the actual feelings of CHP, Iyi Party and even Felicity Party voters. How will they react against such weird efforts to collaborate with a de facto separatist party?

The evening of 31 March will show.

A number of HDP politicians and PKK convicts are continuing their hunger strike. HDP’s Hakkari MP Leyla Guven started the strike on November 7, 2018, and is still continuing. The total number of people joining the strike campaign reached over 300. The goal of the strike is to push the Turkish government to make the PKK’s imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan’s prison conditions better. The people joining the strike, together with the PKK and the HDP at the organizational level, argue that Ocalan is in solitary confinement and this situation should end.

In fact, Ocalan is not under solitary confinement. He was placed in Imralı Prison on 15 February, 1999, and has served his sentence there since then. He served his sentence alone until November 17, 2009, for security reasons but then other convicts were placed in the same prison. After sharing the same prison with five other convicts, Ocalan asked the prison administration to send the other convicts to other places for the reason that he did not have good relations with them – four of them were PKK members and one was a TIKKO member.

Ocalan was allowed to socialize with other convicts on the island under prison regulations. He also meets his family members, despite some periods of bans on family meetings. From 11 September, 2016, to January 2019, he was not allowed to meet his family members until he met his brother Mehmet Ocalan again in January. After the meeting, the PKK declared that the family meeting does not mean much and that Ocalan is still under solitary confinement.

HDP and its predecessors have long followed and supported Ocalan. Sometimes, they argued that Ocalan was being poisoned, sometimes tortured. Nevertheless, all the international investigations so far have falsified such claims. Ocalan is a convict serving his sentence. This is the plain reality. Most recently in past September, the European Court of Human Rights decided on the application of Ocalan’s lawyers, regarding the allegations of maltreatment and torture. The Court ruled that the claims were unfounded and lacked evidence.

HDP and its predecessors have long followed and supported Ocalan. Sometimes, they argued that Ocalan was being poisoned, sometimes tortured. Nevertheless, all the international investigations so far have falsified such claims.

What is the point of the PKK in initiating hunger strikes one more time then? Why does the organization seem to be bothered by Ocalan’s meeting with his brother? The answer is that Ocalan is a useful tool for the PKK. He has influence over PKK sympathizers but not much over the PKK’s new leadership centered around Cemil Bayık and Murat Karayılan.

The PKK leadership tried to mobilize the Kurds of Turkey on a few occasions over the past years. They called for resistance in Turkey to support the Kobani battle between the PYD and Daesh in Syria. The HDP also joined the call and asked its mass basis to start resistance in Turkish cities. As a result of the call, there was a wave of violent riots in some heavily Kurdish populated cities of Turkey during 6-8 October, 2014.

50 people died in the riots including four children. The PKK supporters killed Kurds who were seemingly affiliated with conservative Kurdish political and civil society organizations (more details here). The riots were suppressed by the operations of the Turkish security forces. The second call came a year and half later. The PKK and the HDP called Turkey’s Kurds to start urban warfare in the summer of 2015.

As of today, the PKK has lost much of its mobilizing capacity. The past year was quite smooth with regard to PKK terrorism. The call for hunger strikes for Ocalan seems to be the PKK’s only remaining option to make an impact.

The PKK sent armed people to the Kurdish populated districts of Turkey, the HDP municipality vehicles dug ditches and built trenches. It was a planned armed rebellion in heavily civilian populated areas, which caused a high death toll including thousands of PKK members, 793 Turkish security personnel, and 314 civilians. Eventually, this rebellion was also suppressed.

As of today, the PKK has lost much of its mobilizing capacity. The past year was quite smooth with regard to PKK terrorism (details here). Given the circumstances, the call for hunger strikes for Ocalan seems to be the PKK’s only remaining option to make an impact. The organization’s violent mobilization attempts all failed or when appeared, suppressed by Turkey. The PKK is quite limited in its choices to counter Turkey and trying to use the Ocalan card this time with hunger strikes. Nevertheless, despite the three months since the beginning of the strikes, neither Turkey’s Kurds nor the world public opinion are paying much attention to this call.

Turkey’s opposition parties including the CHP, the Iyi Party and the HDP have established a holy alliance to stop the ruling AK Party-MHP bloc. The political system, especially after the introduction of the presidential system in April 2017, has started to be structured by bipolarity. The underlying motive for both of the alliances is similar, the will to power. However, they are shaped by two different and rather opposing ideological frameworks based on their positions within the political system.

The opposition seeks to detach the AK Party-MHP bloc from power, and thus adopts a discourse of liberty. This discourse strives to convince the electorate that the ruling power is oppressive and excluding the majority of society. The ruling AK Party-MHP bloc, in contrast, puts forward a discourse of power in order to maintain and strengthen its grasp on power. This discourse seeks to persuade the electorate that its rule is inclusive and should continue to sustain the security and welfare of the country.

The CHP, Iyi Party, and HDP alliance, designed to topple the AK Party-MHP bloc, is shaped by two different and rather opposing ideological frameworks based on their positions within the political system. 

Therefore, the result of the power struggle, including the upcoming local elections on 31 March, between these two political blocs will be determined by a couple of factors. The first one is the persuasive power of each discourse or policy. For the ruling bloc, the electorate will look at whether its interests are tied to the continuation of the existing order. If the electorate feel that an election loss for the ruling bloc will destabilize the political system and lead to an insecure environment, both with respect to the economy and politico-military matters, they tend to vote for the ruling AK Party-MHP bloc. More specifically, if the AK Party-MHP ruling bloc convinces the electorate that it’s loss of power will impair the fight against terrorism (PKK, FETO and DAESH) and deteriorate the country’s economy, which had recently taken a downturn, it will guarantee the election victory.

Thus, the opposition should convince the electorate that a change in power or the replacement of the ruling bloc with the opposition will not harm the fight against terrorism and improve the country’s economy. The opposition should persuade the electorate that there is an alternative to the ruling power and that alternative is itself.

For the ruling bloc in Turkey, the electorate will look at whether its interests are tied to the continuation of the existing order. The opposition need to convince the electorate that a change in power will not harm Turkey’s fight against terrorism and will improve the country’s economy. 

This leads us to the second factor. The opposition should demonstrate that the alliance between the three political parties –here we can include the Islamist Felicity Party (SP)– form a strong and dependable force for ruling the country. The opposition alliance is formed by two secular-nationalist political parties –the CHP and the Iyi Party– and the Kurdish nationalist HDP. The integrity and coordination between the CHP and the Iyi Party is not a strong one since the CHP tilts towards the Left whereas the Iyi Party has right-wing tendencies. This creates a serious divergence of opinions over some critical issues. The relations between these two parties have already created serious ideological debates among their members and caused some party members to resign and shift sides.

The opposition is not offering a clear-cut economic program to fight with the existing economic problems such as rising inflation and unemployment rates as well as not providing a comprehensive program for urban planning

As we add the Kurdish nationalist HDP, which is the political representative of the PKK armed terrorist group, the internal contradictions of the opposition bloc intensively rises. Not only the right-wing Turkish nationalist Iyi Party members and its grassroots have reacted to this rapprochement with the HDP, but left-wing CHP members and its grassroots showed displeasure with the decision to ally with the HDP. The inclusion of the HDP into the alliance has decreased the chances for the opposition to be able to weaken the ruling bloc in the upcoming local elections. This will more likely be perceived by the electorate that the opposition bloc may endanger the fight against terrorism, especially Turkey’s struggle with the PKK’s Syrian branch, the YPG.

Moreover, the opposition is not offering a clear-cut economic program to fight with the existing economic problems such as rising inflation and unemployment rates. Not to mention that the opposition bloc has not provided a comprehensive program for urban planning and government in the run-up to the local elections. In sum, despite the rising public displeasure with the existing ruling power, the opposition seems to fail to offer itself as an alternative in the elections.     

Last week was very hectic for Turkey’s foreign policy agenda. U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will withdraw from Syria after a telephone conversation he had with President Erdogan. Since Turkey has been very determinant on having another military operation in Syria towards the east of the Euphrates in order to wipe the U.S.-backed YPG forces out, possible outcomes of this withdrawal decision have been increasingly debated. How will Turkey renew its road map for a possible operation towards the east of the Euphrates under new circumstances? Will an ongoing balance of power among Turkey, Iran, and Russia change after the withdrawal? The answers to these questions are highly crucial to clarify the blurred picture.

In addition to its foreign policy agenda, the latest incidents created enormous effects in domestic affairs. It is obvious that one of the controversial issues in Turkey’s local election agenda will be the military operation towards the east of the Euphrates. Due to this reason, it is necessary to evaluate the positions of Turkey’s political parties and how they interpret this issue.

After President Erdogan clearly underlined that Turkey will pursue a new military operation in Syria, the deputy chairman of the CHP stated that his party will only support diplomatic and “peaceful” solutions rather than military operations in the region. Nevertheless, the party did not propose any recommendation for implementing a diplomatic solution for this long-standing intractable conflict, which has caused the death and displacement of millions. Kilicdaroglu, leader of the CHP, was also cautious about the possible military operation and underlined creating channels of dialogue. It is obvious that the CHP is taking a firm stand on this issue and is waiting for further developments. Furthermore, it is obvious that the CHP favors direct negotiations with the Assad regime in order to bring a solution to the conflict.

How will Turkey renew its road map for a possible operation towards the east of the Euphrates under new circumstances? Will an ongoing balance of power among Turkey, Iran, and Russia change after the withdrawal?

The HDP, on the contrary, is openly attacking the possible military operation of Turkey in Syria. The co-chairman of the party stated that Turkey and Russia should leave Syrian territories and that Syrian people should use their self-determination rights. Furthermore, the withdrawal decision of the U.S. was not found persuasive by the party due to the previous similar announcements of the U.S.

Contrary to the official statement of the party, HDP circles harshly criticized the decision of the U.S. through social media channels. They even initiated a petition campaign to the White House urging for the U.S. support the Kurds in its fight against Turkey. These circles define the Turkish army as “predator” and “invasive.” They claim that Turkey will invade Kurdish territories in Northern Syria and cause an irreversible human catastrophe. These groundless claims are also very popular in the Western media and are increasingly being circulated nowadays.

All developments until now show that Turkey’s military operation in Syria may be one of the determinants of the result in Turkey’s upcoming local elections.

It is obvious that Turkey’s possible operation towards the east of the Euphrates will be one of the hot topics of local election campaigns. Even if the CHP hesitates to take a firm stand under current conditions, it may instrumentalize Turkey’s possible military operation to criticize the government in the long-term. However, the HDP may take a harsher position, including mobilizing its supporters, like it did before. All developments until now show that Turkey’s military operation in Syria may be one of the determinants of the result in Turkey’s upcoming local elections.

On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on the arrest and pre-trial detention of the HDP’s former co-leader, Selahattin Demirtas. According to the verdict, the ECHR ruled that Turkey violated the “right to be brought promptly before a judge,” the “right to free elections,” and “limitation on use of restrictions on rights” while the Court also ruled that “Demirtas had been arrested and detained on “reasonable suspicion” of having committed a criminal offence.”

Demirtas’s parliamentary immunity was lifted based on the general vote in Turkey’s National Assembly with regard to the lifting of parliamentary immunities on May 20, 2016. Demirtas had already been sentenced for carrying out terrorist propaganda in 2013 and again was detained on 4 November 2016 with new charges and was finally sentenced last September. Nevertheless, he is also facing much heavier charges for his alleged role in the PKK-backed violent riots on October 6-7, 2014.

50 people died in the riots that Demirtas called his party to support – including 4 children conducting charity work in Diyarbakir. Now, the ECHR is requesting for his release. 

On top of a number of speeches given by Demirtas, he also called his party to join the riots. 50 people lost their lives in the riots including 43 civilians, 2 police officers, and 5 PKK members. The most dramatic scene of the events was the death of four friends in Diyarbakir on October 7, 2014. They were part of a humanitarian organization and were conducting charity work, when they were spotted by the PKK-backed rioters. Among the friends, 16-year-old Yasin Boru’s death was the most brutal one. After three of his friends were shot dead (one could run away despite his injuries), Boru was beaten, stabbed, thrown from the roof, and then burnt to death. And all this time, the HDP and its co-leader Demirtas were accusing Turkey for using Daesh as “hitmen” and calling people to join the “resistance.” (Resistance is almost a code for HDP elites in glorifying the PKK’s armed campaign. This was also the keyword when HDP made calls for an urban warfare campaign in the summer of 2015).

Yasin Börü was beaten, stabbed, thrown from the roof, and then burnt to death. And all this time, the HDP and its co-leader Demirtas were accusing Turkey for using Daesh as “hitmen” and calling people to join the “resistance.”

Demirtas later made a public statement in Diyarbakir three days after the murder of Boru and his three friends. In his speech he stated, “We made the call for people to join the protests (riot)” but argued that there was no violence, for which he actually did not use the word riot but “the glorious public resistance.” This speech in which Demirtas blamed the government for the use of violence also took its place within the indictment against Demirtas in his trial in Turkey.

I’m not sure whether the ECHR paid attention to this and alike speeches in the indictments in Turkey, but the ECHR verdict also held that Demirtas “could be said to have been arrested and detained on “reasonable suspicion” of having committed a criminal offence and that there had therefore been no violation of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention.” Nevertheless, the Court ruled that Turkey had violated the right to be brought promptly before a judge, the limitation on restricting a person’s rights, and the right to free elections.

After the decision came out on Tuesday, there was a harsh debate as to whether Turkey will release Demirtas or not. I’m not an expert in law, but here is the decision: The Court held that the respondent State was to ensure that Mr. Demirtaş’s pre-trial detention was ended at the earliest possible date, unless new grounds or evidence justifying his continued detention were put forward; and that Turkey was to pay the applicant 10,000 euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 15,000.

In response to the voices raised within the EU in regards to the ECHR’s ruling on Demirtas, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu stated: “Why are you so silent when it comes to Greece’s non-compliance?”

The Court’s most concrete decision is about compensation, but I’m not sure about Turkey’s response with regards to the payment. After all, President Erdogan stated that the ruling is not binding. Further, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu criticized the decision and the statements that the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the EU Commission, Federica Mogherini, made on Turkey. In his response, Cavusoglu was on the same line with President Erdogan’s earlier comments and responded to Mogherini by saying, “Why are you so silent when it comes to Greece’s non-compliance?” In a nutshell therefore, it seems that there are no signs for the immediate release of Demirtas.

Turkey’s local elections in 2009 will be the ‘first’ local elections in the new presidential system, both President Erdogan and his political competitors are going through a rigorous process making their final tunes in deciding the candidates of local administrators. It was recently announced by the party spokesperson that the candidates for about 40 municipalities have been decided and now waiting to be announced by the President Erdogan tomorrow.

President Erdogan and his party have still an advantage over their competitors since the last elections as the recent public opinion polls reflect. The AK Party attached importance to polls (temayül yoklaması) in deciding the candidates. In these polls two criteria are important: the first is how candidates perceive success and the second what would be the voting inclination of voters towards candidates.

Like all local elections in Turkish political history, three cities are the most important battle grounds in the competition: İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir. Experts argue that the results in these major cities will have an important impact on the next presidential elections

Change is expected in the AK Party candidate profiles that more than half the candidates will probably be new names. For Istanbul, the candidate of AK Party is finalized: Binali Yildirim – the former and last Prime Minister of the parliamentary system who has gained esteem through his former administrative responsibilities. In Ankara, polls show that Mehmet Ozhaseki – previous Minister of Environment and Urban Planning – who has a considerable experience in local administrations (as major of Kayseri between 1998-2015)- will be the final candidate. For Izmir the mentioned name was Mahmut Ozgener – 38th President of Turkish Football Association – who was an important political figure in İzmir, but sources close to the party tell that the AK Party’s candidate for İzmir will be Nihat Zeybekci, former minister of economy.

President Erdogan’s main competitor, Kemal Kilicdaroglu – head of CHP (Republican People’s Party) – has long been flirting with Meral Aksener’s Iyi Party to come up with a common candidate in major three major cities Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir in order to consolidate opposition votes against the AK Party candidate as they are aware that one victory in Ankara or Istanbul against AK Party will have a psychological effect.

On the other hand, People’s Alliance shows glimpses of survival even though both leaders, Erdogan and Bahceli, publicly announced before that there would be no alliance in the local elections. However, both leader got together in the presidential palace recently and some say that they reached to an understanding for a partial agreement on some cities. President Erdogan wants the support of MHP in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir in return for supporting MHP’s candidates in three other cities. HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) which has been losing public support over the past five years, will apparently support CHP’s candidates in the western cities but it will depend on the candidate’s profile. CHP will be facing a grave dilemma of with whom to form an alliance: Turkish nationalist Iyi Party or Kurdish nationalist HDP?

*Written by Selahattin Emre Celebi. 

On Sunday 22 April, Turkey’s main opposition party CHP announced that 15 MPs had resigned and joined the Iyi Party. This action was taken under the conditions when it was not yet clear whether the Iyi Party could take part in the June 24 early elections. After this move by the CHP, it was announced that the Iyi Party could take part in the elections. This incident created a rapprochement between the two parties and turned into an official alliance in time. Nowadays, Turkey has been witnessing another rapprochement between the CHP and the Iyi Party and wonders whether it will turn into another pre-electoral alliance again.

Indeed, there have been some rumors of unofficial meetings taking place between the party officials for some weeks now. Some of these meetings have been verified by party officials, but it was emphasized that the agenda of those meetings were not related to local elections and possible alliances. Nevertheless, the leaders of the CHP and the Iyi Party had their first official meeting last week.

The CHP and the Iyi Party are trying to find a way to make not a broad but a limited cooperation and are seeking to find a proper and well-designed method to provide it.

The agenda of this meeting, of course, was the upcoming local elections and the possible advantages and limitations of forming an alliance. As reflected in the press, the parties are negotiating on several scenarios in order to form an alliance in 9 provinces. In other words, the CHP and the Iyi Party this time are trying to find a way to make not a broad but a limited cooperation and are seeking to find a proper and well-designed method to provide it.

Nonetheless, the picture is not yet clear even though the sides are asserting the opposite. For instance, Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya, Mersin, and Adana, are expected to be an issue of negotiation between the two parties. However, previous election results reflect the fact that these parties fail to win the elections by forming an alliance, even if ceteris paribus. Additionally, surveys conducted to see possible outcomes of the alliance prove the probability its limited success.

Under current conditions, the CHP forming an alliance with HDP in Istanbul and Iyi Party in Ankara seems to be more reasonable. However, when taking into consideration previous election results, even this will not bring about the intended outcome.

Of course, both the CHP and Iyi Party are aware of this fact as they conduct surveys and prepare simulations. Due to this reason, the CHP has been trying to broaden the boundaries of a possible alliance by involving the HDP. Kilicdaroglu had a meeting with a former HDP MP, Ahmet Turk, last week solely for this purpose. The Iyi Party on the other hand, has announced that they will not accept any scenarios that suggest bringing the Iyi Party and HDP together. This means that the CHP will have to make a choice between these two parties by calculating the gains and losses of the two options.

Under current conditions, forming an alliance with the HDP in Istanbul and with the Iyi Party in Ankara seems to be more reasonable. However, when taking into consideration previous election results, even this will not bring about the intended outcome. More, it is not an easy job to find candidates running for election under any possible alliance. For instance, Mansur Yavas, one of the possible joint candidates for Ankara, underlined that he would not run under a party and demanded a broad consensus on his name. Finding a proper way and good candidates for alliances is a complex issue.

The lack of trust between the CHP and the Iyi Party might be the biggest deficiency for a possible alliance.

Last but not least, the lack of trust between the CHP and the Iyi Party might be the biggest deficiency for a possible alliance. The sharp break of the Nation Alliance after the June 24 elections caused mutual accusations and severe criticisms between the two parties. None of the parties took the responsibility of the failure of alliance and blamed each other instead. Since only 5 months has passed since this process, both parties will primarily have to pay attention to building trust between themselves.

Less than five months are left to the local elections in Turkey. Political parties have already started the process of selecting their candidates. Even though it is not yet officially confirmed, Iyi Party is going to nominate Ümit Özdağ for İstanbul, Şengül Hablemitoğlu for İzmir, and İsmail Koncuk for Adana according to party sources. Before selecting the right candidate, all political parties are setting a roadmap to follow in the upcoming elections. Analyzing these roadmaps is crucial to understand main dynamics of the upcoming process.

As the governing party, the AK Party has begun to make some preparations for possible candidates. The party will organize a meeting for the party delegates in the following days in order to settle the criteria for candidate selection. Even though this criteria has not yet been clarified, President Erdogan underlined that the party would determine candidates with the participation of all party branches. Furthermore, the AK Party is focusing on choosing candidates who have a good reputation in their electoral districts. In accordance with this aim, party officials are paying close attention to the results of surveys conducted in various electoral districts to see the reflections of possible candidates.

While there have been some names debated in the press as possible candidates, the head of the local administration branch of the party announced that the process would be finalized at the end of the month. According to official statements coming from other party sources, some provincial and district heads will resign in order to run for the position of mayor.

AK Party officials are paying close attention to the results of surveys conducted in various electoral districts in order to assess the reflections of possible candidates.

When it comes to the main opposition party, the CHP is still facing serious issues, which is preventing the party from focusing on local elections. While on the one hand Muharrem Ince’s role within the party is still being questioned, the latest controversial speech of CHP deputy Ozturk Yilmaz on the Adhan (Islamic call to prayer) raised tensions within the party again. Because of this reason, the CHP spokesman warned all party officials to obey the rules of the party and to stay away from provocative speeches.

Despite these issues, the party is still discussing the possibilities and limitations of forming an alliance with other opposition parties. The CHP had a meeting with representatives from the Iyi Party and the HDP in previous weeks. Nevertheless, it is still a question as to whether the party will form an alliance or not, and how opposition parties will approach the idea of forming an alliance in the local elections. Thus, it seems that these parties will wait until last minute to announce whether they will be forming an alliance or not.

The HDP, on the contrary, is openly seeking to form an alliance, especially with the CHP. The party officials frequently call for uniting against the AK Party to gain more municipalities and weaken the party on a local level. Although the HDP officials see the formation of the “democracy block” as an obligation, the other parties have not yet replied to this call yet. Some CHP officials have welcomed this idea and are trying to convince party leadership to respond positively.

The main opposition party, the CHP, has not been able to focus on local elections due to the party being pre-occupied with the unclear role of Muharrem Ince within the party and the recent controversy regarding the Adhan.

Consequently, while parties have accelerated their preparations for the upcoming local elections, their candidates and strategies are still unclear. After the candidates are announced, all parties will start their local election campaigns on local and national levels.

Nowadays, Turkey’s political agenda is full with international issues. The new term in Turkey-U.S. relations after the release of Pastor Brunson has become a matter of curiosity in the last couple of days. Moreover, the missing Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, seems to have shifted the U.S. approach against Saudi Arabia and thus will affect the current dynamics in the Middle East.

Under this ambiguous environment, Turkey’s domestic agenda and the upcoming local elections have become of secondary importance for the public. Nonetheless, political parties have already began to concentrate on their possible strategies in the local elections.

As part of their preparations for local elections, Turkey’s political parties held consultation and evaluation meetings in order to draw a road map. All parties had an idea on the possibilities and limitations in choosing the right candidate. The governing AK Party, for instance, underlined that the upcoming elections would be a turning point for Turkey’s future and it was an obligation to increase both the vote rate and the number of mayors in order to successfully implement the new presidential system. Party officials and members contributed to the ongoing discussions on possible electoral strategies in accordance with this purpose.

One of the major issues that will determine electoral strategy is whether the AK Party and the MHP will form an alliance in order to maximize their benefits. Since the unofficial meetings between the two parties have just started, it is still not possible to clarify this issue. Nevertheless, it should be underlined that both parties pay a significant attention to forming an alliance and are trying to form a consensus on possible ways of achieving this. It seems that the further details of this issue will surface in the following days.

On the other hand, preparation meetings held by the MHP and the Iyi Party revealed the increasing tension between these two parties. Even though both parties have had hot discussions since the June 24 elections, the degree of discussions altered in the last days. The Iyi Party blamed the MHP for betraying nationalist ideals by forming an alliance with the AK Party.

Since the Iyi Party faced serious existential crises after the June 24 elections and was about to collapse, it is now trying to find a new identity and purpose for existence. In accordance with this aim, the party is working to develop a nationalistic stance instead of its catch-all approach, which failed in the previous elections.

The main opposition party, the CHP, has also been discussing possible election strategies. During the meetings held, party officials criticized the party’s current discourse on being so elitist and left-wing oriented. The solution proposed for this problem was to adopt rightist and populist discourse in the upcoming local elections in order to change the image of the party.

At this point, the CHP faces a serious dilemma in deciding whether or not to form an alliance with the Iyi Party and the HDP. Due to the fact that the Nation Alliance failed in the last elections, the party is hesitant to cooperate with these parties. While an intra-party group is working hard to convince the sides to form an alliance with the HDP, some party officials are wary of this and are aware of the risks.

However, the supporting group sees this as the only way of achieving success in the local elections. The more nationalist wing of the party wants to form an alliance with the Iyi Party, especially in Ankara and some provinces in the Mediterranean and Aegean.

Even if consultation and evaluation meetings were a stage for drawing a road map for the local elections, political parties still need more time to finalize their strategies. Due to this, parties are expected to focus more on domestic policy in the upcoming days.

With the rise of discussions around local elections, the electoral strategy of opposition parties in Turkey have come to the forefront again. Especially the main opposition party, the CHP, became the focus of these discussions last week. The party’s possible strategy was not only an issue of concern among other parties; it was also a puzzle for intra-party circles. Even though the CHP’s strategy in local elections is not clear yet, taking into consideration discussions made, it is possible to see a latent alliance among the CHP and other opposition parties.

As occurred just before the June 24 elections, the party once again conducted a research on possible outcomes of forming alliances in local elections. Even if the results of this research were not shared with the public, it becomes an obligation for the party to keep its current position in the local administration as reflected on the press. Due to this reason, there are several scenarios on the table for the CHP’s local election strategy.

Nowadays, the main scenario focuses on the outcomes of a possible alliance between the CHP and the HDP during local elections. A similar scenario was also present during the June 24 election period. Due to the fact that the CHP found this alliance ineffective in comparison to the alliance with the Iyi Party (IP) and the Saadet Party (SP), party circles convinced the leaders to choose the second option. Although there was not an official alliance between the CHP and HDP during the June 24 elections, the CHP maintained its latent support for the HDP’s electoral campaign. This was to such an extent that some CHP circles voted for the HDP in the parliamentary elections. Post-election surveys indicate that the HDP passed the threshold with the votes it obtained from CHP supporters.

Due to these reasons, another latent alliance between the CHP and HDP is the most powerful scenario on the agenda. As reflected in the media, the party sees this alliance as beneficial – especially in metropolitan cities. Istanbul, of course, becomes the main target of the CHP in local elections and the party designs its electoral campaign by focusing on this city. The results of the 2014 local elections reflect the fact that it is not possible for the CHP to “win” Istanbul by only forming an alliance with the HDP. Thus, the party is trying to broaden the boundaries of this alliance by involving other parties and political circles.

At this point, the possibility of forming an alliance with IP (Iyi Party) is also on the agenda. However, because the official alliance between the CHP and IP was broken soon after the June 24 elections, it is difficult for these two parties to re-form an alliance. More, rising nationalistic tendencies within the IP makes it impossible for the party to get together with the HDP. Finally, IP officials blamed the CHP for failure in the parliamentary elections, and therefore, it will not be easy to convince these individuals to forming another alliance with the HDP.

Even though the official alliance between CHP and IP was broken soon after the elections, the close relation between CHP and HDP continues. The similarity in discourse among these two parties increases the possibility of an alliance to occur during local elections. It is almost certain to see a latent alliance in Istanbul and Ankara, and it will not be a surprise to see an alliance in other electoral districts. However, seeing as the votes of this alliance will not be enough for the CHP to gain Istanbul, the party will try to find a new way to convince Meral Aksener’s IP.

HDP is adding new instances of embracing PKK terrorism to its long list. Most recently, Musa Farisogullari and Remziye Tosun, two HDP MPs from the city of Diyarbakir, attended the funeral of Mehmet Yakisir. Mehmet Yakisir was the PKK’s regional leader for Turkey’s Black Sea region. Further, he was leading the group who killed the 15-year-old teenager Eren Bulbul last summer. In the instance, Eren Bulbul had seen some suspects around his village in Macka, Trabzon and reached out to soldiers for a search. The hiding PKK group shot him dead together with Sergeant Ferhat Gedik while Bulbul was leading the way for the soldiers.

The regional leader of the PKK, Yakisir has quite a record of killings and other terror crimes in his resume. After a year-long search, Yakisir was killed by Turkish security forces in a counterterrorism operation last Sunday in the countryside of Gumushane. Yakisir’s burial ceremony, of course, was not missed by HDP members. Not surprisingly, an immediate investigation started for the HDP MPs who attended the funeral. MP Tosun, in response to the investigation, said that she does not recognize the investigation. HDP’s Diyarbakir office also embraced the act. The party’s provincial chairman Serif Camci said in his statement that “Tosun and Farisogullari are implementing a political struggle matching with the realities of our people.” He also stressed that he is proud of Tosun and Farisogullari’s participation to the ceremony.

“Political struggle” is the key part of Camci’s statement. The HDP, in practice and discourse, still positions itself as the political wing of the PKK’s armed campaign. The feelings are mutual as the PKK also treats the HDP in this way. At the end of the day, the HDP has very little autonomy other than following the PKK’s dictates in a number of issues from its leadership choice to the making of the MP lists and to its policy proposals and general political discourse. The party often, all the time to be accurate, whitewashes the PKK’s acts of terror and puts Turkey on the spot as the scapegoat.

The examples are too many but just to name two, the HDP constantly keeps blaming Turkish security forces for the partial demolition of Eastern towns such as Cizre, Nusaybin, and Sur where the PKK tried to start an urban war by planting bombs around and within these towns. The PKK planted the bombs, the PKK declared the urban “war,” yet the HDP managed to blame the Turkish security forces for awakening the PKK members from a dream of revolutionary urban war.

The number of political killings is on the rise as the PKK has increasingly targeted AK Party politicians of Kurdish origin in the region. More, the PKK continued to execute unarmed AK Party supporters in the region after the June 24 elections. Nevertheless, the HDP is very quiet on the killings of such civilians and never blames the PKK for its murders, which is quite problematic.

The HDP, in fact, crossed the line for a political party long ago. It functions as the political wing of the PKK. Yet, how come it is still not banned and can take place in parliament? From a pure legal perspective, such a party would be banned long ago in any Western democracy. However, decision makers in Turkey believe that the past closures did not stop the PKK to form new seemingly legal parties. Further, when the PKK loses its political wing, the organization propagates that armed campaign is the only available option to pursue its goals. Such a message was effectively used in the past by the PKK to widen its support base in southeastern Turkey.

Turkey has chosen to tolerate the political wing of a terror group. The HDP also seems to sense this choice and acts quite boldly. As for the PKK, it is a win-win game. It utilizes the HDP’s legal network for its propaganda and recruitment purposes. When the party goes through investigations and party members are arrested for terror related charges, it is still not a loss for the PKK. At the end of the day, the arrested HDP members allow the PKK to build a story of victimhood.

Despite the HDP’s misuse of its legal network, the Turkish state does not ban the party. Ankara allows the party to function but ensures that individuals are investigated when needed. HDP members who are affiliated with the PKK or show open support to the PKK go through investigations and spend long terms in jail if found guilty. The message is clear, you can still do politics in the ranks of the HDP as long as you can keep yourself from out of the PKK circle. Nevertheless, the HDP should not overestimate the Turkish state’s choice to leave the “political path” open. As the HDP embraces a louder affiliation with the PKK, counterterrorism measures might be hardened to hurt the party organization more severely.

“The perpetrators must be found regardless of who they are. Such acts are unacceptable.” These are the words remarked by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) after the PKK terror group killed a man named Mevlut Bengi and hung his body on a lamppost with a note left near the body. The terror group does not hide its violent acts but rather announces them on their official website to intimidate the Kurdish people in the region, just as they did in the case of Remzi Guler, who was killed by the PKK along with his mentally challenged son, or like the suicide attack they organized at the bus stops in Ankara, during which 36 civilians were killed and 349 were injured. Most of the time, the PKK does not only claim responsibility for the mass murders, but also pays homage to their violent attacks and murders. Many examples of it can be viewed in the pro-PKK periodical titled Yeni Özgür Politika.

On the other hand, the HDP condemns all the murders perpetrated by the PKK without referring to the terror group and always issues the same statement: “The perpetrators must be found regardless of who they are. Such acts are unacceptable.” Several people occasionally object to this approach of the party. For instance, Leyla Zana, one of the most prominent figures in the Kurdish political movement, tried this. Zana was accused of betrayal as she criticized the PKK and said: “The Kurds supporting the HDP are politically-driven while the Kurds supporting the AK Party (Justice and Development Party) are driven by their emotions.” According to the PKK, all of the Kurds who support the AK Party are traitors regardless of their motivations. Muzaffer Ayata, one of the senior names within the PKK, answered this statement of Zana in 2016 on Yeni Özgür Politika: “The traitors are probably thinking that they will not be called to account and keep feeding on the bones thrown to them. They will always be cursed and called traitors.”

Altan Tan, the HDP Diyarbakir deputy last term, criticized the PKK and the HDP while analyzing the support Erdogan received from the Kurdish people following the constitutional amendment referendum. Tan said: “There is a group who have been inclined towards the AK Party although they formerly supported the HDP. The reason is obvious: The people do not want to see a civil war breaking out or politics based on digging ditches, but rather wish to see support to democratic channels.” Tan also accused the HDP of condoning all these and added: “Some people find it very difficult to answer the question why Erdogan enjoys an increasing support. They cannot admit that the PKK has made mistakes and that digging ditches, civil war attempts, conflicts, violence and terror were wrong.” Tan is a name who joined the HDP during the party’s later stages and eventually resigned from the party. But interestingly, the HDP did not defend Zana after the PKK blacklisted her although she was from the grassroots of the movement.

In the latest elections, the HDP gained 67 seats in Parliament by receiving 11.6 percent of the vote. It was observed that the party’s vote share declined in the eastern and southeastern regions, where the Kurdish population is predominant. 30 percent of the party’s overall votes came from Turkey’s three largest cities, namely Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. So, it can be seen that the HDP’s vote share among the Kurdish population declined, while the vote share it achieved in metropolitan cities was partly due to the support given by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

The electorate leaned towards the HDP mostly because of the view that the HDP might detach from the PKK if it grows stronger, which will lead to the consolidation of civil politics and bring an end to terror. During the last parliamentarian term, the HDP was busy with practicing or legitimizing the orders and discourses of the PKK. In the general elections held on June 7, 2015, the HDP received 80 parliamentary seats. Only one month after the elections, senior PKK figure Cemil Bayik called upon people to take up arms and prepare tunnels and trenches, while the HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas said: “We call people to protect this honored resistance of digging ditches to build our autonomy; taking a step back will clash with our dignity.” PKK headed to city centers and terrorized urban spaces by digging ditches. Thousands of Kurdish people had to emigrate due to the ditches dug in front of their houses. In the early elections held on November 1, 2015, the HDP’s vote share decreased from six million to five million, while the number of its deputies went from 80 to 59.

With its 67 deputies, the HDP has another chance to choose democratic means over violence and polarization ahead of the new parliamentary term. Will the party consider the electorate’s demand of civil politics and stance against the PKK? Will they be able to show the courage to stand against the PKK, which has already been displayed by the electorate? Or are they willing to keep their violence prone policies?

Last week, a father and a son who were breeding livestock for living were killed by a group of PKK militants in the Yalimli village of Diyarbakir’s Lice district. The father was 48 years old while the 24-year-old son was mentally challenged. According to the testimonials of the family’s relatives, the father, namely Remzi Guler, went to water their garden in Lice nine days ago along with his son Mahmut Guler. After a search that went on for nine days, the bodies of the father and son were found on Friday and it was revealed that both were shot to death. The PKK left a note near the bodies as is their custom.

The PKK had also left a note near the body of Mevlut Bengi, whose body was hung on a lamp post by the terror group members after being killed two weeks ago. They accused Bengi of acting as an informant and co-conspirator and stated that they executed him and hung him on the lamp post as a warning to others. Bengi was a 46-year-old man running a small grocery store in Turkmen village of Agri’s Dogubeyazit district and was a father of 11 children. The PKK militants abducted Bengi one day before the June 24 elections and killed him two days after.

Today the PKK continues to kill Kurdish people who do not support the terror group regardless of whether they are children or disabled. For instance, PKK militants killed a man named Osman Balic and his 3-year-old daughter Revsen on the grounds that Balic left the PKK. In another instance, they killed someone they accused of co-conspiracy in Cizre, filling his mouth with banknotes.

Of course, the PKK does not only announce their acts with the notes they leave near the victims’ bodies. They also claim responsibility for their attacks via their media outlets, including a number of websites. One of them is Germany-based Yeni Ozgur Politika newspaper that is freely distributed and sold across Europe. But recently, the execution news that was announced on the PKK’s offshoot HPG’s website was not directly announced on Yeni Ozgur Politika. They were only referred in an article in which several insinuations were made. The article penned by Ahmet Kahraman reads: “Lately, a man named Mevlut Bengi was killed in Dogubeyazit. It is claimed that he is a public enemy and an informant working for the AKP (the Justice and Development Party).” Kahraman went on to suggest that murder was not something desirable but justified the murders of the Kurdish people who give support to the AK Party instead of the PKK. It seems that the newspaper was obliged to defend the executions rather than praising them this time as they stir up a great reaction not only across Turkey but in the region.

In fact, the PKK/KCK attack in Ankara that targeted military shuttle buses, for which the terror group’s offshoot TAK claimed responsibility, was put to captions by the same newspaper. In this attack, two PKK suicide bombers named Seher Cagla Demir and Ozgur Unsal blew themselves up at the Guvenpark bus stops located in Ankara’s Ataturk Boulevard, killing 36 people and injuring 349. The Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtas’s brother Nurettin Demirtas portrayed Seher Cagla Demir by means of mythological figures and penned a lengthy article that likens her to Hercules. The article was published by Yeni Ozgur Politika. After writing an ode to the 26-year-old Demir code-named “Doğa” (meaning nature in Turkish) by employing the motifs of Greek and Roman mythologies, Demirtas finally likened her to lotus flower and went on: “Doga is Heracles. Some people deflect the issue from the main point on the grounds that death cannot be glorified or they likened the acts to the suicide attacks of Daesh. Doga cannot be defined as a suicide bomber. She is a heroine; she is a lotus flower that cannot be stained by any means.”

At the end of the article, Demirtas made a call to new suicide bombers: “Now is the time for Doga.”

On June 5, Yeni Ozgur Politika published an interview with Nurettin Demirtas, which was conducted in the place where he kept hiding. Likening PKK kamikazes to lotus flower and praising the murders, Demirtas this time asked for support to his brother, the HDP’s presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtas who is currently imprisoned. He said during the interview: “I can order dessert to those voting for the HDP and my brother on the mountains of Kurdistan,” and the interview was published with a photo portraying him while making a dessert.

Last week this column listed four results of the June 24 elections for Turkey’s electorates in the eastern cities, where the country’s Kurds live en masse and which are included in the maps of the imaginary PKK state. They were firstly, the AK Party and the HDP still dominate Turkey’s elections in the east, secondly, the HDP continued its loss in the region – as was the case in the last general elections of November, 2015, thirdly, pre-electoral alliances of other parties cost seats to the HDP, and finally, Turkey’s Kurdish votes do not act as a block but intra-Kurdish differences prevail in the region.

The first one was discussed but the second and third are for this week’s analysis. To begin with, the HDP continued its loss in the region, as was the case in the latest general elections of November, 2015. When compared to the November 2015 elections in the region, the HDP lost most votes in Sirnak (a decrease from 85% to 70%) and Hakkari (from 83% to 70%). In the June elections of 2015, the HDP had received more than 60% of the votes in eleven cities, which dropped to 8 in the November 2015 elections, and finally dropped to 5 in the elections that took place two weeks ago. The most striking drop took place in Bitlis where the HDP received over 60% of the votes in the preceding elections but where the AK Party has become the leading party this past June.

 

The AK Party, on the other hand, could not reach to vote rates over 60 in the region in the general elections, but it did receive more than half of the votes in Kilis, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Adıyaman, Malatya, Elazig, Bingol, and Erzurum. In the presidential elections, which took place on the same day, AK Party’s candidate Erdogan received over 70% of the votes in Kilis, Elazig, and Erzurum, and over 60% of the votes in Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Adıyaman, Bingol, Erzincan and Malatya.

 

Together with last week’s analysis you read here, these results show that the AK Party and the HDP still dominate the region, where the balance of power tilted towards the HDP during the June 2015 elections, but is now even – if not towards the AK Party. Nevertheless, there is more to the story. Another finding of the June 2018 elections is a novel one.

The pre-electoral coalitions cost the HDP seats in Parliament

The June 24 general elections were bipolar elections both nationwide and in the east. In the east, as it is obvious now, the real race took place between the AK Party and the HDP. For the rest of the country, the elections were mostly between the people’s bloc (cumhur ittifakı) of the AK Party, MHP and BBP and the nation bloc (millet itifakı) of the CHP, Iyi Party and the Felicity Party.

While the race in the eastern cities was not between the AK Party-led and CHP-led blocs, the blocs still made an impact. For example, the HDP could not win a seat in the city of Adiyaman where it got 15,41% of the votes. The CHP, on the other hand, obtained a seat with a vote rate of 12,05. The reason was novel but simple. As a result of the pre-electoral coalition forming process, the Iyi Party and Felicity Party votes were also added to the CHP’s, which in total surpassed the HDP votes.

The examples are not limited to Adiyaman or to the HDP. The other parties also switched seats depending on the total votes of the blocs in different cities but the HDP –which did not take place in any pre-electoral coalition- had nothing but losses with this new regulation.

A final finding of the June 24 elections in Turkey is that neither Turkey’s eastern votes nor its Kurdish votes act as a bloc but intra-eastern and intra-Kurdish differences prevail in the country. Since this findings reaches deeper levels of the region’s sociological facts, let’s tackle it in the next column.

The June 24 elections are over. As for the big picture, there is no surprise. Many analysts in Turkey predicted the results before the election day. The day before the elections, you also read in this column that Erdogan was likely to win the elections in the first round but with a divided parliament; the HDP votes, for the first time, would pass the MHP’s, and other projections as such. Nevertheless, the results are still full of depth to analyze, and here we go with a focus on ethnic voting patterns in Turkey.

Kurdish votes were expected to play a key role in the June 24 elections. As for the parliamentary elections, whether the HDP would exceed the 10% threshold would determine the AK Party’s chance to hold a majority in parliament. As for the presidential elections, the Kurdish votes mattered as well, which is natural because in an election that requires %50+1 votes to win, you cannot neglect any significant social segments. These novelties make it necessary to analyze the voting pattern in Turkey’s eastern cities where Kurds are thought to be significant demographically speaking.

The main results of the June 24th elections on these terms are:

• The AK Party and the HDP still dominate Turkey’s elections in the east.
• The HDP continued its loss in the region – as was the case in the latest general elections of November, 2015.
• Pre-electoral alliances of other parties cost seats to the HDP.
• Turkey’s Kurdish votes do not act as a block but intra-Kurdish differences prevail in the region.

The AK Party and HDP still dominate Turkey’s elections in the east

In the eastern cities of Turkey, where the ethnic Kurdish population is in significant numbers, the competition took place between the AK Party and the HDP in this election. In the region, speaking of the parliamentary elections:

• The AK Party and the HDP shared the first spot in all the cities of the region. Whereas the AK Party won the first spot in 13 cities, the HDP came first in 11 (see map 1).

* these cities are chosen because they appear on the maps of the imaginary PKK state to be separated from Turkey. In other words, this is the area that the PKK calls Bakur (Northern) Kurdistan. In fact, the map is even conservative because some PKK maps also include cities such as Kahramanmaraş, Osmaniye, Sivas where the HDP has no promising results at all.

• While the AK Party won 62 seats from these cities in total, the numbers for the HDP, CHP, and MHP seats are, respectively, 46, 11 and 7.
• The CHP and MHP have not topped the race in any of the cities in the region. Nevertheless, the CHP reserved second rank in Ardahan, Erzincan, Gaziantep, Hatay, Malatya and Tunceli. The MHP, on the other hand, came second in Elazig, Erzurum, Igdır and Kilis (see map 2).

• The AK Party came third and, hence, is not amongst the top two parties in Igdir and Tunceli. The HDP was not among the top three parties in Elazig, Erzincan, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kilis and Malatya (see map 3).

• In the cities of Erzincan and Kilis, AK Party won all the seats.
• As for the poorest performances, the HDP could receive only 2.3% of the votes in Kilis while AK Party stayed at 14.7 % in Tunceli.
• Hüda-Par can be seen to be successful compared to other minor ethnic Kurdish parties such as Hak-Par. Hak-Par candidates entered the elections with independent candidates yet its candidates could not exceed several hundred votes. When its independent candidates in Diyarbakir and Batman are also included, Hüda-Par received over 200,000 votes.

This column has addressed only one leg of the 24 June elections, parliamentary elections. If we had analyzed not the parties in the parliamentary elections but in the presidential elections, then the AK Party gets even brighter results. Given that Erdogan received more votes than his party whereas Demirtas below his party’s vote, the presidential elections in the region are much better off for the AK Party.

The other findings of the election results are as follows and will be analyzed in the upcoming column:

• The HDP has continued losing vote rates in the region as it was the case in the latest general elections of November, 2015.
• Pre-electoral alliances of other parties cost seats to the HDP.

Eastern Turkey includes a multiplicity of ethnic groups. Other than ethnic identification, political salience of ethnicity also differs across cities in Eastern Turkey. Hence, Turkey’s Kurdish (and non-Kurdish) votes do not act as a block but intra-Kurdish differences prevail in the region.

After weeks of intensive campaigning and eager anticipation, Turkey successfully accomplished yet another test of democratic maturity by holding the combined general and presidential elections last Sunday. The fact that these elections constituted a milestone for the paradigmatic transition towards the presidential government system ensured that they were fiercely fought by both the government and the opposition parties with the notable addition of public relation initiatives by the presidential candidates. These were the first general elections that were held in the aftermath of the failed military coup attempt on July 15, 2016, and as such they represented the dawn of democratic normalization and a potential end to the state of emergency that was declared after the coup.

Despite all the hype and misinformation in mainstream international media accusing President Erdogan of authoritarianism and the government for suppressing the political opposition, pretty much all the stakeholders agreed that the elections were held in an open, free and fair environment. The campaign trail was peaceful and turned the whole country into a festival zone via vibrant promotion endeavors by the parties and candidates.

On election day, voter turnout was around 87 per cent which represented one of the highest participation rates in Turkey’s democratic history, comfortably surpassing most of the established democratic polities in the world. Electoral alliances ensured that the ten per cent threshold for entry to the parliament was not applied and almost 99 per cent of the votes cast for political parties were reflected as parliamentary representation.

The incumbent Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the Iyi Party, the Democrat Party (DP), the Felicity Party (SP) and the Great Union Party (BBP) will be represented in the forthcoming parliament. The parliament will be one of the most representative and inclusive parliaments in Turkey’s political history. So there is no discussion concerning the procedural validity or democratic legitimacy of the election results.

When it comes to gauging the winners and losers of the elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerged undoubtedly as the biggest winner with yet another crystal clear victory over his political opponents. He received over 52 per cent of the total votes and was successfully elected in the first round as the first president of Turkey under the new presidential government system. Being the dominant political actor who placed his mark on Turkey’s political, economic and social transformation over the course of the 2000s, Erdogan managed an effective campaign and confirmed once again that he retains the confidence of the Turkish electorate going forward as the most credible leader.

Erdogan has been in power as Prime Minister and President for the last sixteen years without interruption and managed to record thirteen election victories. Despite risks of democratic fatigue and popular reaction to some of the government actions by certain social groups, the personal political popularity and societal approval of Erdogan seems to withstand the toughest tests of time. While clinching his latest landslide victory in the presidential elections, he managed to receive nearly eleven million votes more than his closest rival Muharrem İnce. It is really very difficult to cite another political leader in the modern democratic world with such strong and consistent democratic credentials.

The reluctance of Western media to understand and analyze the uniqueness of the deep bond between Erdogan and the Turkish society lets them to confuse unrivaled democratic legitimacy with authoritarianism. The Turkish President displays exceptional capacity to create a popular blend of socio-economic stability, structural transformation, improved public services, increased living standards and identity politics which is translated into sustained electoral success.

But it was also interesting to note that for the first time in these elections there was a ten per cent gap between Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (52 to 42 per cent) which indicated a performance divergence. Although the People’s Alliance, comprising the AK Party (295 MPs), MHP (49 MPs) and BBP (1 MP), which was born out of the popular resistance to the July 15 coup attempt clinched a clear parliamentary majority, Erdogan in his traditional balcony speech on election night frankly expressed that he received the ‘message of the electorate’ and will oversee a thorough post-election analysis.

So far, taking electoral demands, reactions, or signals swiftly into account through rational and well-researched analyses has been one of the greatest strengths of Erdogan. Therefore, it is pretty likely that he will gather detailed reports concerning the dynamics that affected AK Party votes in certain cities as a result of candidate selections for the parliament, performance of local administrations, or certain economic policies. Therefore, the post June 24 process will witness Erdogan’s multifaceted attempts to oversee a great transformation in the institutional structures of the Turkish state, while keeping the electoral strength of his AK Party in check going forward to the municipal elections next March.

Sunday’s elections also opened a new chapter in Turkish politics as the new electoral regulations allowed alliances between different political parties, thereby making the ten per cent national threshold obsolete. As voters made it absolutely clear that local representation is important to them, legal reforms could be made to lower the national threshold or create some form of single-member district system in the near future. Incidentally, strategic voting which implied certain shifts among allied political parties was one of the most important factors leading to surprising results in view of preceding public opinion polls. As the presidential government system becomes more institutionalized, it is highly likely that strategic voting and issue-based alliances among different political groups will become more pronounced. Therefore, leading political parties and their leaders will have to adopt their ways in line with the emerging patterns of pragmatic voting behavior.

The Nationalist Action Party (MHP) clearly gained from its alliance with the AK Party and the rising national sentiments in the wake of military operations in northern Syria, gathering critical parliamentary representation with 49 MPs. The leader of the MHP, Devlet Bahceli, was among the winners of the electoral process by managing to keep his party above the eleven per cent mark and maintaining his strategic alliance with Erdogan despite the recent internal division within his party which gave birth to the Iyi Party. In the context of the strong executive that will be formed with the presidential system, MHP has great potential of acquiring a degree of political effectiveness that goes much above its numerical presence.

Another winner who came stronger from the campaign trail and election experience was Muharrem Ince who ran as the presidential candidate of the CHP. Ince, a long-time domestic opponent of CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, was nominated as the presidential candidate in an almost futile race against the towering figure of President Erdogan probably in an attempt to undermine his future party leadership aspirations. Yet Ince as a pragmatic figure who could address the radical secular groups that characterize the backbone of the CHP as well as relatively conservative voters in central Anatolia displayed a surprising performance and personally received eight points higher than his party.

Differing from Kilicdaroglu in his more mature reactions, Ince congratulated Erdogan’s election victory and declared that he will continue his public meetings after the elections, signalling a leadership clash within the CHP. Both CHP and Kilicdaroglu were among the main losers as the party vote stood around a disappointing twenty two percent, while their strategic moves aimed at keeping the Iyi Party and the PKK-affiliated HDP above the ten per cent threshold caused numerous criticisms from within the party organization.

Meral Aksener, the leader of the newly established Iyi Party was another loser as she received unlimited public support from international media during the campign as the chief candidate that could undermine Erdogan’s authority. But despite all the media hype, Aksener’s personal electoral support did not even reach to the ten percent mark and her fragile party might well disintegrate in the parliament. Finally, HDP was another loser as the support for its leader Selahattin Demirtas fell three points to seven per cent, while party votes reached eleven per cent with the controversial tactical support of CHP supporters which was later criticized for legitimizing a terror-affiliated group.

As soon as election results were declared President Erdogan adopted a reconciliatory tone and expressed that the institutionalization of the presidential system will proceed through an inclusive process with the contributions of different social sectors, business actors and NGOs. He is keen to embark on a democratic normalization and development endeavor through which the state of emergency will be gradually lifted, structural reforms in the economy will be swiftly implemented and new productive synergies will be created to galvanize Turkey’s position as an emerging power in the global system. If the Western world decides to support this endeavor by accepting respectable and equitable forms of interaction with Turkey rather than portraying Erdogan as an ‘old-school third world dictator’ and blackmailing him through political or financial means, a positive environment of win-win situations could emerge sooner rather than later.

During his years in office as Prime Minister, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his determination to resolve the Kurdish question at the cost of his political life. Considering the terror group PKK, which has been operating for the past 30 years and is condemned by all the political parties in Turkey, it was still hard to publicly suggest a solution on the subject back then. Firstly, 13 years ago, Erdogan delivered a speech in Diyarbakır province: “It is improper for major countries to condone the past mistakes since the problems are all ours. To be more specific, the Kurdish question is not a problem confronted by a certain part of the nation, but a problem that interests the entire nation, including myself.” In 2009, he said: “Whether you call it the Kurdish question, Southeast question or East question… No matter how we call it, we have initiated working on the question.”

With this, Erdogan embarked on the most venturous peace project in the history of the Turkish Republic, which is widely known as the Reconciliation Process. He kicked off works to negotiate with the outlawed PKK through their imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was until then described as a “baby killer” by media outlets, the judiciary and the political parties that were dominated by the secular Kemalist tradition.

The Kurdish question was discussed thoroughly throughout the process, and every single taboo was faced. Introducing amnesty and building a new Turkey was being mentioned. A Committee of Wise People, which encompassed people from all segments and ideologies including nationalists, liberals, religious conservatives and seculars was formed. The Committee strived to explain the west and the east of the country to each other and convince people to the reconciliation process. Even the bases of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who have recently formed an alliance ahead of the June 24 elections, listened to the suggestions. As the process went on, people stopped hiding their Kurdish identity and embraced it. Kurdish lessons were introduced in schools, and Kurdish political propaganda was allowed. In Nowruz celebrations that year, Ocalan, previously called a “baby killer,” addressed entire Turkey. All these developments were unimaginable for Turkey until then.

Everyone showed great enthusiasm to the process, but the first signs of the major problems in the process appeared during early 2015. After the general election held on June 7, 2015, PKK attacks abruptly gained speed with the influence of the new developments in Syria. In a short period, the reconciliation process was replaced by the ditches dug in cities and town centers, clashes and curfews. During this period, Turkey was simultaneously confronted with Daesh and PKK attacks. After a year, the military coup attempt organized by the Gulenist Terror Group (FETO) became the last straw for the Turkish nation.

Turkey faced a new fact particularly in the aftermath of the 2015 election: the ditches. Although the ditches were occasionally seen in several places before the election, the PKK systematically began digging ditches in many city and town centers following the election with the support of FETO operatives who infiltrated key state apparatuses and bureaucracy.

During the November 1 election held in the midst of this chaos, the pro-PKK Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) vote share declined and thus the party lost 21 of its 80 deputies assigned to the Parliament with the June 7 elections. The AK Party again came to power alone and the new government was eventually formed. Instead of the reconciliation process, the new government prioritized enabling public security. Stating that they regarded the ditches as a defense mechanism, HDP co-chairs expressed autonomy discussions in the shadow of terrorism.

In 2016, a bomb attack was organized to a military shuttle in Ankara that carried both military and civilian officers. 29 people were killed in the attack while dozens were injured. The PKK’s break-away faction, namely the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), claimed responsibility for the attack.

During the ditch terror they inflicted, half of the population in Sırnak’s Cizre and Silopi districts, Diyarbakir’s Sur district and Mardin’s Nusaybin district were directly affected by the incidents. The number of people migrating from the four districts reached 93,000. The people were so enraged that Murat Karayilan, a senior PKK figure, had to express that the ditch strategy in the cities was wrong.

Turkey will go to the polls on Sunday. Currently, the counter-terror efforts are ongoing both inside and outside the country. When it comes to how the HDP views the ditches after all the incidents, the party co-chair Pervin Buldan and the party’s presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtas gave the following answers with regard to the ditches that led to hundreds of casualties and displaced thousands of people: Buldan claimed, “People dug ditches in self-defense,” whereas Demirtas stated, “I do not have issued a single remark that shows support to the ditches. We should have been more insistent and courageous in our attempts to get rid of them.” (Demirtas issued a written answer as he is currently under arrest.)

Turkey will have one of its historic elections tomorrow. The elections will be the first of its kind in many ways in the history of Turkish democracy. To start with, the parliamentary and presidential elections will be held on the same day. Following the elections, the presidential system that was adopted in the referendum of April 2017 will be implemented in full scale.

Another novelty for this election are the pre-electoral coalitions. We will see two such coalitions and three individually running parties in the ballot for the parliamentary elections. As for the presidential elections, there will be six candidates.

For the parliamentary elections, we see two pre-electoral coalitions. The first is the People’s Alliance (Cumhur Ittifaki) of the ruling AK Party and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Ideologically, the former is a socially conservative, economically liberal, politically reformist party. The latter is known to be an ultra-nationalist party. The MHP will not run for the presidential elections and will support the AK Party’s candidate Erdogan. Another minor ultranationalist party, the Great Union Party (BBP) is also a part of the bloc but its banner will not appear on the ballot. Interestingly, Erdogan also has the support of another nationalist party, but this time a Kurdish nationalist one. The Free Cause Party (HÜDA-PAR) is not a part of the Cumhur Ittifaki but has declared that it will support Erdogan for the presidential elections.

On the other side, we see the Nation Alliance (Millet Ittifaki) of the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), ultranationalist Good Party (IP), and the Felicity Party (SP) as a moderate Islamist party. All three parties, nevertheless, will run separately for the presidential elections. The minor center-right Democratic Party is also part of the bloc but will not appear on the ballots with its banner.

Besides these pre-electoral coalitions, HÜDA-PAR, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and Patriotic Party (VP) will also separately run for the parliamentary elections and the latter two will also compete in the presidential elections with their own candidates.

What makes the elections difficult is not necessarily the number of parties running in it but its novelties. The alliances make the electoral threshold irrelevant for smaller parties such as the MHP, IP and SP. Many SP supporters did not vote for the SP in earlier elections because their votes would be wasted with no chance of the SP passing the threshold. Now the party is free of this constraint and we can see its true potential. Further, this election will be the IP’s first test on the ballot, which also makes it hard to predict its votes. Since the IP has split from the MHP and we don’t know how big a slice it took with it, we also do not know the MHP’s current vote share.

As a further complication, it is also difficult to predict the HDP’s votes because a number of CHP voters on social media declared that they will vote for the HDP in the parliamentary elections. They call it strategic voting. This way, these voters want to push the HDP over the 10 percent electoral threshold. The logic is simple. Since the HDP and AK party are the only effective parties in the heavily Kurdish populated eastern and southeastern Turkish constituencies, HDP’s absence in parliament will give the AK Party at least 60 extra seats. Such CHP voters would rather see those seats occupied by HDP MPs.

Besides all these novelties and uncertainties, it is hard to predict the results of Sunday’s elections. Nevertheless, pretty much all public polls and the general expectation in the public opinion have an overwhelming consensus on some points. For one, nobody expects a change in the order of the parties compared to the previous parliamentary elections. This is true at least for the top two. The Turkish public is pretty sure that the AK Party will top the elections, followed by the CHP.

The third party will not be the MHP this time. Although the party received around half a million more votes than the HDP in  the November 2015 elections, the IP’s split from the MHP is likely to place the HDP in the third spot. While many can easily name the top three parties in the post-election parliament in order, we do not know whether the AK Party can have the majority in parliament. With the existence of pre-electoral coalitions, we will have a higher number of parties in parliament. In such a scenario, the only way for the AK Party to hold the majority is if the HDP does not pass the 10 percent threshold.

Hence, polls show that the AK Party will come first in both ballots but what we do not know whether it can hold the majority in parliament and whether it can get 50%+1 votes in order to win the presidential elections in the first round. Many would bet for a victory for Erdogan (after all, he has quite a reputation for winning elections) but with a divided parliament, which will make politics quite hot for the following months in terms of the relations between the executive and legislative branches.

Selahattin Demirtas, the jailed ex-coleader of the HDP, gave his first speech on the national public broadcaster of Turkey on Sunday (for the text of the speech, see the link). He will give his second speech on Saturday but I believe his first speech gave enough material for some content analysis. While the speech is powerful to deliver its message to those who already support Demirtas, it was also not surprising for those who are critical of him.

Demirtas began his speech by questioning the rationale and fairness of his imprisonment, which is natural for anybody who is waiting to hear their sentence in prison. Nevertheless, it does not sound so strange to those who remember his brother Nurettin Demirtas. Nurettin Demirtas was a former leader of the very same political wing. He was also arrested and kept in prison for some time. Once released, Nurettin Demirtas fled to Iraq. He, more or less, kept his position in the movement but this time on the military wing – the PKK. He recently asked for votes for the political wing, the HDP while not bothering to change his “guerilla” uniform with a suit. In my opinion, Selahattin Demirtas would not flee in case of release but his brother’s escape in the very same situation might let many to think that the brothers might meet in the Qandil region where the PKK headquarters are located. Anyhow, what makes Demirtas’s Sunday speech more interesting and unfortunately sad for me is something else.

For a person who has a chance to show that he has no intention to support a terror organization, Demirtas picked the very wrong people as his references. Among the 15 people Demirtas cited on Sunday, one –Seyh Bedrettin- started an armed rebellion against the Ottomans in the 15^th century. Another figure we heard in the speech was a semi-mystical hero, Koroglu, who rebelled against the governor of Bolu. To be fair, the Koroglu legend has a nation-wide popularity in Turkey. Nevertheless, I cannot stop but question why Demirtas kept picking the armed men to prove that he is totally peaceful and has nothing to do with violence.

Anyhow, next on the list is Sheikh Said. Demirtas paid his respect to Said in his speech but who is Said? He is the most prominent Kurdish rebellion leader of the early republican era. Said was executed once his rebellion failed but his rebellion shed the blood of many Turkish security forces, sounds familiar, huh? The next man is Seyit Rıza, a leader of another rebellion in the early republican era. He also rebelled and failed, killed and got killed. The next in the list is a trio. Deniz, Huseyin and Yusuf. They were armed, attempted to start a revolutionary guerrilla warfare against the Turkish state, were captured and executed in 1972. The next person Demirtas cited was the most troublesome for me. Mahir Cayan, another leader of a radical leftist organization, is also a documented killer who -not surprisingly- died in combat with Turkish security forces in rural Tokat.

Perhaps, the most ironic part of Demirtas’s speech was the “Yilmaz in prison” part. Yilmaz Guney was a famous actor and director. But, for God’s sake, this guy injured a man and killed another. What makes this comparison more tragic is Yilmaz Guney fled the country. Didn’t anyone tell Demirtas that his comparison of himself with Yilmaz Guney may not be a smart idea. What did Demirtas think by glorifying a man who killed a man and ran away as a fugitive?

To be fair, Demirtas also paid tribute to some unarmed men: a singer, a couple sufi slash poets, a couple prophets, and the prophet Mohammed’s grandson. Yet, nine armed men against these six is not a good ratio in a speech delivered to make one point clear: I am a man of peace. Here is my call for Demirtas. Next time you want to make it clear that you should not be in jail for alleged linkages to the PKK, do not salute the people who started armed campaigns against the state.

Since last Thursday, members of the Turkish diaspora all over the world have been going to polls to vote for Turkey’s snap elections to be held on 24 June. There are approximately 3 million Turkish citizens who are able to vote in the elections. As one can guess, 3 million is a number of great importance as it makes up 5 percent of Turkey’s total electorate.

Turks who have been living abroad for over fifty years received the right to vote abroad for the first time during the presidential elections in 2014, when Turks elected their president for the first time through popular vote. Prior to this, it was difficult for most expats to go to Turkish custom gates, which was the only place they could vote during elections. In 2014, only 530 thousand Turks abroad went to the polls due to some organizational problems. However, this number increased during the general elections on 7 June, 2015 up to 1,06 million and to 1,3 million during the snap elections in November of the same year. The number of all diaspora votes all over the world (including the votes casted at Turkish custom gates) also increased to 1,4 million during last years referendum. Interestingly, this is also the number of Turkish voters who live in Germany.

During the last referendum on 16 April 2017, more than 800 thousand Turks living abroad supported Turkey’s constitutional change with “Yes.” Now, the AK Party, for instance, hopes to encourage at least 1 million voters to go to the polls in order to support the party and its presidential candidate. With regard to the previous election results, one notices a certain pattern according to which nearly two thirds of all members of the Turkish diaspora support both the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling party.

By focusing on the 2017 referendum results, for instance, it is striking that 75 percent of the votes in Belgium, 65 percent of the votes in France and 63 percent of the votes in Germany were given in favor of the new system of government. By this, it should be clear that in particular regarding the presidential elections, votes from the Turkish diaspora might be of great importance and even have a decisive meaning. In this sense, the AK Party additionally prepared a special election program for the Turkish diaspora in which the specific needs of Turks abroad are addressed in depth. On the other hand, it’s also an interesting and positive step that the main opposition party also took the diaspora into consideration by addressing it in its general election program – though, being not concrete but rather superficial. Nevertheless, it is a worthy and interesting issue that the diaspora’s ability to change the election results is seriously taken into account, even by opposition circles.

However, there are unfortunately two issues, which disturb and affect the diaspora in a negative way during election periods. First of all, people living abroad have to face and cannot understand the ban regarding campaign appearances on, for instance, German soil, as has been the case during both the last referendum and even the current 24 June elections. Furthermore, it’s observed that while the campaign ban is strictly executed regarding the AK Party, in particular HDP events, to which PKK supporters and HDP politicians join, are generally tolerated.

The second issue is about the negative behavior of both German officials and even private persons who are biased to obstruct if a relation to the recent Turkish government is noticed. Loads of rented meeting and conference rooms are getting cancelled in order to prevent programs in favor of, for instance, Turkey’s new system of government. At the same time, unfortunately, HDP supporters, who are very close to and openly sympathize with the PKK, are welcomed on various platforms. In this sense, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that even the Green Party MP, Cem Ozdemir publicly supports the Kurdish left-nationalist HDP and has displayed his support by attending the party’s events in Germany.

Nevertheless, these kinds of efforts most probably wouldn’t change most of the diaspora members’ political positions. On the contrary, members of the Turkish diaspora are going to be much more encouraged to vote in accordance with their own standpoints. Thus, it’s definitely a positive step since Turks abroad are also able to vote during elections in the country of which they hold citizenship. While it is not possible for millions of people who live abroad to vote during general or local elections in the country they live in, the right to vote regarding Turkey’s elections thus is perceived more seriously. However, it seems that some native citizens in countries where the Turkish diaspora does exist, develop an increasingly negative attitude regarding Turks’ right to vote, their political preferences, the increasing visibility of the election process and its importance by having an influence on the election results.

While the elections are coming closer, the political agenda is getting busier in Turkey. Amongst many developments in this regard over the past week, one is particularly interesting with regard to the electoral competition between the AK Party and HDP – the two major parties that share the votes of Turkey’s Kurdish constituency.

Huda-Par, a minor ethnic Kurdish party, had already declared that it would not be a part of the AK Party-led electoral coalition (which means that it will run for the parliamentary elections separately from the AK Party-MHP-BBP bloc also known as Cumhur Ittifaki). Nevertheless, this week Huda-Par announced that it will support AK Party leader Erdogan in the presidential elections, which will be held on the same day as parliamentary elections. While the color of the Kurdish votes in Turkey is the key to the electoral outcome, this recent move by Huda-Par deserves a closer look.

The Free Cause Party (Huda- Par or Hür Dava Partisi) is one of the many ethnic Kurdish parties in Turkey. The party was found in 2012 and has been active in the Turkish political landscape since then. In fact, the party has a troubled past given the allegations about its connection to the Kurdish Hizbullah, a terrorist organization which was responsible from multiple kidnapping and murder cases during the 1990s. Some see the party as a continuation of Kurdish Hizbullah, some see Hizbullah and Huda-Par totally unrelated, and some see Huda-Par as an output of an evolution from a radical violent organization to a peaceful political party. While there is no consensus on the relationship between the two organizations, the prevailing idea is that the two are not totally unconnected. Nevertheless, it is also a common understanding that the party as of today shows no intention to initiate or support a violent campaign and, hence, it is a legitimate member of Turkey’s league of political parties.

Huda-Par has so far failed to catch the voters’ attention as the Kurdish constituency of Turkey tend to split their votes between the incumbent AK Party and the secular ethic party HDP. On average, the AK Party receives the votes of conservative Kurds while the HDP attracts secular and ethnic nationalist Kurds. Huda-Par is ideologically somewhere between the AK Party and the HDP. It has both ethnic nationalist and conservative tendencies. To some, the party is beyond mere conservatism and can be called Islamist for its emphasis over the Islamic ummah, the Palestine cause, and the call for a system that will enable the Islamic way of life.

The distinction between Huda-Par’s Islamism and the AK Party’s conservativism might require further explanation. While both parties cherish Islamic values, the AK Party does so in a more conservative way. For the AK Party, Turkey should conserve its national culture and must not lose its connection with the country’s centuries long history going back to the Ottoman era. Islam has a central place in Turkey’s national culture and this culture must be protected according to the AK Party. But it is more like a conservative interpretation of Islam, or as some call it, the Turkish-Islam synthesis, which is quite peaceful with the secular character of the state and has nothing to do with the salafi interpretation of Islam.

Huda-Par seems to be more troubled with both the Turkish-Islam synthesis and many secular laws and regulations of the country. Hence, while the two parties ideologically differ, as one is merely conservative and the other more inclining toward Islamism, they share the emphasis over the role of Islam in society and both parties propagate conservative social policies. Among such policies one can count promoting the role of religion in the education of children, holding an anti-abortion stance, and policies aiming to minimize drug and alcohol consumption.

What does it mean for the AK Party to receive the support of Huda-Par in the presidential elections? At the end of the day, Huda-Par is just a minor party that cannot compete with the AK Party or the HDP for the Kurdish constituency. Nevertheless, Huda-Par’s decision to support Erdogan signals to the Kurdish constituency that this election is not between Turks and Kurds but between those that cherish Islam and those who do not.

Huda-Par’s approval of Erdogan also sends a signal to some confused, conservative or perhaps even Islamist but also Kurdish nationalist youth. It tells the Kurdish constituency that Erdogan’s electoral coalition with the Turkish nationalist MHP does not require conservative Kurdish nationalists to vote for other presidential candidates. This message means more than sheer numbers.

Huda-Par’s call will not only mobilize its own voters to vote for Erdogan, but it also sends a signal to the broader Kurdish masses. In other words, Huda-Par has signaled to the conservative Kurdish voters that Erdogan is still the closest candidate to them. How this message will be received will determine the winner of Turkey’s Kurdish votes, and perhaps even the winner of the presidential elections on June 24.

Is the HDP an ethnic party, a socialist party, or both? Ethnic parties are defined as parties that prioritize “the interests of a particular ethnic group.” Such parties can have other items on their agenda but their focus stays on the interests of the ethnic group the party tries to appeal to. We can add some further attributes to ethnic parties. Such parties can nominate candidates belonging to different ethnic groups but the majority of their candidates tend to be from one single ethnic group. Finally, the respective ethnic group also makes up the majority of the party’s constituency. The HDP satisfies all three attributes and, hence, can be seen as an ethnic party. Nevertheless, it is not the party’s only attribute.

The HDP is also seen as a socialist party. The party shies away from such a self-identification in its electoral manifestos but implies it with its emphasis over “class struggle.” The party also tends to choose one of its co-leaders from socialist parties. The former co-leader Figen Yuksekdag was previously the leader of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and joined the HDP after a deal between the ESP and HDP. One of the current co-leaders, Sezai Temelli was also formerly active in another minor socialist party, the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP). Apart from its socialist discourse and its co-leaders representing minor socialist parties, the party also forms electoral coalitions with Turkey’s socialist parties. Most recently, six socialist organizations some of which are political parties, declared their support to the HDP. In return, the HDP nominated leading figures of these parties for the June parliamentary elections.

Nevertheless, the HDP’s ethnic and socialist characteristics are not balanced smoothly. As the party embraces a greater deal of socialist rhetoric, it distances conservative Kurdish nationalists from the party. As a final sign of this process, the HDP has formed an electoral coalition with minor socialist parties of Turkey but failed to do so with minor ethnic (Kurdish nationalist) parties. Since the PKK has a great deal of leverage and control over the HDP, it helps to follow what the PKK’s leadership thinks about this policy.

Mustafa Karasu, one of the PKK’s politburo members, has recently explained why the HDP does and should take this path. According to Karasu, the Turkish metropoles will help the HDP to be successful in the upcoming elections in June and, hence, the HDP needs the votes of the Turkish left more than the Kurdish nationalist votes, which are seen more or less granted anyway. In order to increase the HDP’s appeal to the Turkish left, the PKK is likely to avoid sending suicide bombers to Turkish metropoles during the one-month period before the elections and will follow a low-profile stance until the elections.

The HDP, on the other hand, is likely to propagate for “peace” and avoid making bold gestures for the PKK and its jailed leader Ocalan. Such a temporary shift worked well in the June elections of 2015 and is likely to be tried once again for June 2018 elections. Yet, the HDP’s flirt with Turkey’s leftist constituency is also pushing some conservative Kurdish nationalists away from the party. For instance, HDP’s Diyarbakir deputy Altan Tan left his party and will run for Saadet Party in the upcoming elections. He justified his choice by referring to the HDP’s decision to form an electoral coalition with the “marginal left” but refuse to do so with conservative Kurdish nationalist parties such as Hüda-Par. The upcoming elections, hence, will show whether the HDP and PKK will be able to appeal to the Turkish socialists without distancing conservative Kurdish nationalists.

After weeks of the upcoming June elections’ topping the agenda, Turkey has shifted its focus elsewhere. Israel’s massacre of over 50 unarmed Palestinians at the fences separating Gaza from Israel and the rest of Palestine has been the top matter on Turkey’s agenda over the past week. All the major parties have condemned Israel’s brutality and a number of them called for or have already organized rallies protesting Israel. In the midst of the growing fury over Israeli violence, the ruling AK Party asked the Israeli ambassador to leave, a measure soon retaliated by Israel.

President Erdogan has also called for rallies in Istanbul and Diyarbakir to show solidarity with Palestinians. CHP leader Kilicdaroglu also slammed Israeli aggression in his speech during the party meeting while he was wearing a Palestinian scarf. Another opposition party, HDP, also condemned Israel’s act. While the “black Monday” shifted Turkey’s focus away from its upcoming elections to Gaza, this still took place in the electoral atmosphere. With respect to Turkey’s Kurds, we saw different reactions to the event occurring in Gaza.

The two major parties that can attract Kurdish votes, the AK Party and HDP, both condemned Israel. A minor but still influential Islamist and ethnic Kurdish party, Hüda-Par was also severe in its criticism of Israel. Yet, different voices have been heard from the rest of the smaller ethnic Kurdish parties as some of them criticized both the AK Party and the HDP for paying this level of attention to the problems of non-Kurds, namely Palestinians. This latter split occurred in the midst of the search of those ethnic parties, which feel that there is not one yet, but that there needs to be an effective and genuine “Kurdistani” political movement in Turkey.

Amongst such minor parties, the Kurdistan Socialist Party (PSK), Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), Northern Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP-Bakur), Kurdistan Democratic Party-Turkey (KDP-Türkiye), Rights and Freedoms Party (Hak-Par), and The Movement of Freedom (Azadî Hareketi) attempted to write a protocol first, and then have a meeting and subsequent agreement with the HDP to run for the June elections with a joint list. The Kurdish-based Freedom and Socialism Party (OSP) had already rejected to cooperate with other smaller ethnic parties by aligning itself closer to the HDP.

PDK-Bakur became one of the earliest splitters and declared that it will not run for the elections, which it sees illegitimate. Finally, on Thursday, the remaining five parties declared that the attempts to form an electoral coalition with the HDP has failed. The parties, in a joint declaration, stated that the HDP did not pay attention to their demands. Accordingly, the HDP declared its electoral manifesto without consulting the coalition of the five. Further, the coalition of the five saw the HDP’s electoral manifesto against the spirit of the negotiations that occurred between them and the HDP. The major critique of these smaller ethnic parties to the bigger ethnic party HDP is that HDP is not ethnic enough. They accuse the HDP of betraying its Kurdish constituency and the “Kurdistani values.”

At the end of the day, these smaller ethnic parties do not have significant electoral support and, hence, their support would not mean much numerically. Nevertheless, the end result illustrates a strange dilemma in Turkey’s heavily Kurdish populated districts. What we see in the region is the dominance of the mainstream AK Party and ethnic political parties. Yet, the latter category is far from forming a unitary bloc. The heaviest chunk of the bloc, HDP, is instrumentalized by the PKK in the legal political sphere of Turkey. Hence, the HDP fails to embrace a peaceful political discourse that can renounce and distance itself from PKK terrorism.

The smaller chunk of ethnic parties are way more moderate in terms of the “methods” of mobilization, as they are all peaceful movements. Nevertheless, their goals of creating a Kurdistan free from the Turkish state’s jurisdiction is neither realistic nor moderate, even for the local population. Under such circumstances, it seems like the electoral race in the region will, once again, be between the AK party and the HDP.

After long-during discussions, Turkish opposition parties formed an alliance before the June 24 parliamentary elections. As it was called the “Nation Alliance,” this cooperation brought the CHP, Iyi Party, Felicity Party, and Democrat Party together. During the announcement of the alliance, it was also emphasized that candidates from the Democrat Party would run under the Iyi Party in elections.

These four parties have been negotiating a possible alliance for a couple of months. Indeed, the Iyi Party and Felicity Party came to an agreement on a partial alliance in the second run of the presidential elections if no candidate would win a simple majority in the first round. Nonetheless, when the decision of snap elections was taken, these parties accelerated their negotiation process. Even if all of these parties have different ideologies, principles, and system of values, they ignored such fundamental issues to form a superficial alliance against President Erdogan and the AK Party.

The CHP’s leading cadre and voters are split between nationalists/Kemalists and left-wing circles. The Iyi Party is supposed to get votes from nationalists within the CHP and MHP. The Felicity Party gets a few votes from the National Outlook Movement – most of the supporters of which vote for President Erdogan and the AK Party. Thus, there seems no realistic common ground or purpose of the opposition parties for the future of Turkey except removing President Erdogan from power that was tried in different forms in the past. This reality was seen in the declaration paper of the alliance. There wasn’t any reasonable justification or purpose of the alliance on paper. These parties also failed to explain how they were going to work in a harmony after the elections.

All of these elements show that this alliance is not an organic but an induced alliance. Does the formation of the alliance among the leading cadres of these parties reflect the will of their voters? The answer of this question is “no”.  After the announcement of the alliance, supporters of the Felicity Party criticized the cooperation of their party with the CHP on social media. Especially the CHP’s historical discourse on women that wear headscarves came to the fore again. Additionally, CHP voters heavily attacked the involvement of the Felicity Party in the alliance and denominated this party with the words such as “backward,” “reactionary,” and “followers of sharia.” These words show that radical secularists in the CHP still have the same mentality against religious people.

When it comes to the Iyi Party, the voter transferability between the CHP and Iyi Party seems to accelerate after this alliance. The angry nationalists in the CHP have already turned their face to the Iyi Party. However, some acts of the CHP’s presidential candidate Muharrem Ince may increase voter transferability between these parties on behalf of the Iyi Party. For instance, Ince’s call for the release of Selahattin Demirtas and his plan to visit Demirtas in jail have raised tensions among the nationalists in the CHP.

Overall, it is seen that the induced and superficial alliance among these parties could not mobilize their voters yet. It can be stated that these parties may take some actions towards mobilizing their voters in the last 49 days of the elections. At this point, it is important to remember that the context is highly crucial on voting behavior. As the alliance among these parties is not the result of an organic and well-thought process but simply aims to overthrow the government with no serious preparation to govern the country, they will most probably suffer to persuade their voters to vote for the Nation Alliance.

The election clock is ticking. Turkey will elect its next president, along with the next parliament, in less than two months on June 24^th. Over the past ten days, Turkey has spent quite an effort to figure out whether the opposition will run with a unity candidate to counter the incumbent Erdogan. The answer has finally come out. After their unsuccessful attempts to back a unity candidate, the opposition parties one by one stated that they will run with their own candidates. While the former president Abdullah Gul has kept silent until today, the signs indicate him as the would-be unity candidate if the negotiations could have been concluded, which did not.

While the option of forming an opposition bloc is not exhausted if the elections proceed to the run-off election of the second round, the option is no longer on the table for the first round. What does it mean for Turkey’s Kurdish electorate? Would a unity candidate such as Gul receive Kurdish votes? I doubt.

The Kurdish electorate, like other ethnic groups in Turkey, have secular and religious members. The more conservative Kurds tend to vote for the incumbent AK Party while the more secular Kurds tend to vote for the HDP. Such a dichotomy is of course subject to ecological fallacy, but holds intact on the macro scale. Based on this assumption, some might think that conservative Kurds would desert Erdogan and support another conservative politician such as Gul, especially as a response to the rising nationalist discourse of the country over the past couple of years. I doubt.

The plain fact is that Erdogan is more popular than his own party amongst Turkey’s conservative Kurds. A comparison of the last two votes, November 2015 general elections and the April 2017 referendum, confirms this conclusion. During the November general elections, the HDP asked the electorate, naturally, to vote for itself. During the April 2017 constitutional referendum, the HDP asked its electorate to vote “No”. While the two votes were different in kind, one a general election and one a constitutional referendum, they both witnessed a direct confrontation between the AK Party and the HDP in the region. The parties had intense campaign processes for both votes. The difference was, multiple candidates to win seats in the former, while Erdogan and the anti-Erdogan blocs competed in the latter.

Let’s just take a look at the differences in the electoral behavior in a number of predominantly Kurdish populated cities in these two votes. While the HDP votes reached 83.7% in Hakkari in November 2015, the No votes (HDP plus all the other opposition parties) reached only 67.6% with a drop of 16.1 points. To be fair, we can simply equate the “No” votes with the HDP votes in the case of Hakkari where there is literally no support for opposition parties other than the HDP. The same story is valid also for Sirnak where the HDP received 85.5% in 2015, but 71.7% a year and a half later – with a drop of 13.8 points. The HDP also lost over 10 points in Mus and Agri. Below you can see the list of the cities where the HDP received +20% of the votes in the November 2015 elections. The table shows the comparison of November 2015 and April 2017 votes in these cities. It appears like Erdogan is a tougher challenger than AK Party for the HDP.

Table: Comparison of HDP votes in November 2015 and “No” votes in April 2017

*“Yes” votes won in blue cities and “No” won in red cities in April, 2017.

*Only the cities where the HDP received +20% in the 2015 elections are included. The cities where Kurds live en masse but do not vote for the HDP are excluded (e.g., Malatya, Elazig, Adiyaman).

* The CHP also has a significant mass base in Ardahan, Tunceli, and Kars, which is why the “No” votes are much higher than the HDP votes.

This table does not explain the entire story. Neither does it give us the results for the next election on June 24^th. However, it gives us some insights on the electoral behavior of Turkey’s Kurds with regard to the AK Party and Erdogan vis a vis the HDP. It also tells us that Turkey’s conservative Kurds praise Erdogan highly. What it does not cover though are new developments that have occurred in the region over the past year and their expected impact on the elections in June, which is the subject for next Saturday.

An unexpected call from the MHP Chairman Devlet Bahceli for snap elections made a swift change in Turkey’s political agenda. The call from Bahceli was positively welcomed by President Erdogan and the AK Party circles due to the urgent need to implement presidential system, which was approved on April 16, 2017. President Erdogan emphasized that Turkey needs to hold snap elections in order to overcome uncertainties arising from the cross-border counter-terror operations in Iraq and Syria and the crisis in neighboring countries. After the parliament approved a bill on holding early elections last Friday, the date of snap elections – June 24 – was approved.

The AK Party and MHP decided to form an alliance for the next general election a couple of months ago. Thus, these parties already established their election strategies on national unity and stressed that their alliance -the People’s Alliance – would be open to each party respectful of the country’s national values, unity and solidarity. Nonetheless, the opposition parties failed to form an alliance even when they negotiated regularly with each other to reach a consensus on the issue. Although concrete steps were taken for various alliance formulas such as CHP-HDP-Iyi Party, CHP-HDP/CHP-Iyi Party, the parties could not reach an agreement. However, after the announcement of the snap elections, it became necessary for these parties to take an immediate decision on whether to join the elections either as part of an alliance or on their own.

In this context, the CHP became the most controversial party. The party has intensely been criticized for not developing an election strategy yet. Due to it being uncertain as to whether the party will form an alliance or not, the party circles started to force the Party Council to make an urgent decision towards the snap elections. As seen in the discussions, the first scenario on the CHP’s election strategy is based on the formation of an electoral alliance with the HDP. The rapprochement between these parties in the last two years strengthens this possibility. Nonetheless, there is a concern that an electoral alliance between these parties may provoke a reaction among voters of these parties, especially among the CHP’s Kemalist and nationalist voters.

However, CHP’s recent step reflected the inconsistency and ambiguity in the party’s election strategy. On April 22, the CHP allowed 15 of its MPs to join the Iyi Party. This strategy is defended with the argument of supporting the Iyi Party’s attempt to join the parliamentary elections, which would be decided after the examination of the High Election Board (YSK). This strategy was harshly criticized even by some prominent names in the CHP because of manipulating elections. Even if the Iyi Party has never joined an election before, it will get a treasury grant and form a parliamentary group in the Assembly. This strategy, which is legal but unethical, shows the possibility of upcoming next steps through the elections. Thus, it should be said that there is not going to be issues or principles in the formation of alliances among opposition parties. The only motivation behind these kinds of inconsistent steps is the anti-Erdogan agenda of these parties.

When it comes to the Iyi Party, the party seems to have two different road maps. On the one side, the party tries to broaden the limits of its alliance with the Felicity Party. It was announced that the Felicity Party would support Meral Aksener if the presidential elections proceed to the second round. It remains unclear whether this alliance would be valid in the first round of elections. On the other hand, the leading names of the party continue to negotiate with the CHP in order to form an alliance in both presidential and parliamentary elections. It is generally believed that their strategy will be revealed until the end of this week.

A court in capital Ankara on Friday sentenced a former senior official of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to 10 years in jail on terrorism-related charges, according to a judicial source.

Aysel Tugluk, former HDP deputy co-chairwoman, had been detained in Ankara in 2016 December and later remanded in custody as part of an anti-terror investigation.

She was accused of managing a terror organization, the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media, said.

At her court hearing, Tugluk rejected the accusation of being a manager of a terror organization and said the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) is not an extension of a terror organization.

“DTK is not an illegal organization, it also never made a call to violence. The main goal [of it] is the democratic resolution of the Kurdish issue,” she had said.

The government accuses the HDP of being linked to the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and the EU.

Source: AA

On May 6, 2010, around midnight, a tape was released on the internet. It was a recording of intimacy between former Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairman Deniz Baykal, who had served for 18 years, and his then-assistant CHP deputy Nesrin Baytok. The tape shook the foundation of the CHP. At first it was asserted that the tape was fabricated. However, this claim was not enough. CHP youth gathered in front of Baykal’s house, set up tents and protests. On May 10, Baykal stated that he was resigning (with an implication that he may return one day). During his resignation, he claimed that the whole incident was a scheme that was carried out by the government and not by those in Pennsylvania (referring to FETO leader, Gulen).

Along with Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who had already announced that he would not run for chairmanship, Onder Sav, Baykal’s 53-yearlong brother-in-arm, visited Baykal at his house. Later on May 22, Kilicdaroglu announced his candidacy. Since that day, CHP was re-designed and became a party that was being guided by an invisible hand.

A year and a half later, one of CHP’s former deputy chairs, Onur Oymen, explained how the party was being re-designed. Stating that he found documents revealing that the scheme against Baykal was a “U.S.-backed operation,” Oymen spoke about a report that was relayed to him in early 2009. In a report focused on CHP prepared by an NGO called Silkroad Institute, it was stated that “Baykal will resign and Kilicdaroglu will replace him.”

As was later revealed through Wikileaks, former U.S. Ambassador to Ankara was sending similar reports to Washington, while Hilary Clinton was questioning whether this was possible and feasible in her letters to the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. With a clearly U.S.-based operation, a “more appealing chairman” was brought to lead CHP.

Then, we witnessed the media, and in particular Dogan Media Group, polishing and praising Kilicdaroglu. He was given many titles including, ‘Gandhi Kemal,’ ‘the Calm Power,’ ‘Man of the People,’ and others. Photos illustrating him with Deniz Gezmis’s famous parka were being hung on walls, while he himself utilized the slogan, “I’m Kemal from Dersim. I’m Kemal the revolutionary.”

CHP: repeat what is prompted

None of these developments were enough for CHP to win or to increase its vote in the 2011 elections. In fact, I don’t believe that this was the point at all. This re-shape of CHP had different aims. These aims became clearer when people ravaged private and public properties during the May 2013 Gezi Park protests and was revealed during the December 17-25 judicial coup attempt. Kilicdaroglu played montaged tapes that were acquired through illegal means in Parliament. The aim was clear: Erdogan was to be deposed, he would flee abroad and would be brought back for a trial.

Without questioning validity, the new CHP administration were voicing whatever they were being told. More, they also began to disregard legitimacy in certain events. For instance, their deputies did not recite the parliamentary oath after the 2015 elections. The CHP deliberately elected imprisoned people as their candidates, they did not recognize the result of the April 16 referendum and de-famed members of the judiciary when jurors decided against them. More, the party began to spread false news accusing the government of sending weapons to Daesh. They still propagate this claim. Regardless of being rebutted, another cheap lie CHP continues to use is that the AK Party has 120 deputies using ByLock (a mobile app used by FETO members), or the claim that Erdogan and his family have millions of dollars offshore in the Isle of Man.

The party administration also began to adopt an increasingly aggressive discourse as their lies were uncovered. After the results of the June 7 elections were announced and when the AK Party failed to form a government, CHP’s Gursel Tekin told the media that they were going to seize all “pro-AK Party media outlets,” and question businesspeople.

Moreover, the CHP had began to flirt with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). HDP Chair Demirtas and CHP’s Safak Pavey said “we shook them [the AK Party] good.” The same CHP also defamed the PKK’s armistice and demanded the trials of all prominent actors of the Reconciliation Process, including a trial of President Erdogan.

The real disaster occurred right after the July 15 coup attempt. Fleeing the airport with the allowance of the putschists and watching the coup attempt from his TV at home, Kilicdaroglu first claimed that the coup was a “theater play” and then asserted that it was a “controlled” coup attempt. Intriguingly, FETO militants also defined the coup attempt with the same words in the same order. Then Kilicdaroglu began talking about a “July 20” coup, in which he was referring to the announcement of the state of emergency aiming to eradicate all FETO elements within public institutions. In short, FETO prompted, and Kilicdaroglu voiced these on “legitimate platforms.”

Led by Kilicdaroglu, CHP’s “politics” based on lies and incitement continues to be the case nowadays. Last month, after a person attempted to immolate himself in front of Parliament, Kilicdaroglu said: “Why are you burning yourself in front of Parliament? Go and do that in front of the Presidential Palace. Then burn the Palace as well.”

During his parliamentary group meeting on January 16, Kilicdaroglu made a speech that accused the people who resisted the July 15 coup attempt. Referring to the statutory decree which rendered people who resisted the coup immune for their acts on the very night, Kilicdaroglu said the following: “They [AK Party] have lent immunity to civilians who resorted to violence. They have transferred the state’s power to extra-state militants.” Civilians who were targeted by tanks and military aircraft were labelled “militants” and their resistance was described “illegal.” Meanwhile, Kilicdaroglu defines soldiers who fired on civilians on the Bosporus Bridge as “innocent privates who were slaughtered.”

The CHP leader continues to talk slanderously about topics that are sensitive to people and in this respect, he is trying to legitimize the July 15 coup attempt and illegalize the successful resistance. Considering the fact that he is trying to protect certain individuals who have been arrested for being FETO members, Kilicdaroglu is seemingly trying to save the terrorist organization. His aims were the same when he visited closed-down media outlets that belonged to the terrorist organization. This should probably be considered normal for a person who is surrounded by FETO – his chief advisors and deputies have been arrested for collaborating with the group – and whose party employs the same “political” discourse as the organization.

An obstruction in Turkey’s development

Today CHP is becoming an increasingly radical opposition. Using the DHKP-C slogan, “Halkız, haklıyız, kazanacağız,” (“We are the people, we are just, and we will win”) and by appointing Canan Kaftancioglu – who praised the Gezi Park protests – as the Chair of CHP’s Istanbul Provincial Chapter are indicators of this. In my opinion, HDP is digging a tunnel into CHP. It is known that a significant number of CHP members are against HDP/PKK. Indeed, many loyal CHP supporters protested the election of Kaftancioglu.

For instance, referring to Kaftancioglu’s “I’m not a footman of Mustafa Kemal, but his comrade,” Umit Kocasakal, who announced his candidacy to CHP chairmanship said: “Those who have issues with the motto ‘we are the footman of Mustafa Kemal,’ with the unitary structure and those who praise the HDP cannot be part of Ataturk’s party.” Moreover, he accused Kaftancioglu with being the “footman of other powers.” He also added that a “foreign software” was installed to the party.

It is understood that CHP is trying to keep the anti-Erdogan bloc, which it continually attempts to stimulate, alive on the way to 2019. Undertaking the task of politically obstructing Turkey’s march towards a grand future, the CHP administration is bent on achieving their goal. They object to every project. They even objected to the Kanal Istanbul project when its route was announced.

More, CHP is seeking every opportunity to prevent Turkey from having a say in the future of the Middle East. Considering that Kilicdaroglu miraculously became the chair of CHP right before the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, this makes more sense. With the support of the former central media, the CHP bloc are discussing and making people discuss all kinds of matters that would consume most of the government’s energy. In this respect, they are trying to occupy the government in order to ensure that with these trivialities, Turkey would not have time to engage in Syria, Iraq and the wider region.

On the way to 2019, despite the discomfort that it creates among its voter base, Kilicdaroglu’s CHP will reintroduce old lies with new facets while adopting a more aggressive approach by increasing cooperation with radical leftist organizations and the HDP/PKK. Worse, they may attempt to ignite a sectarian conflict within Turkey. They may seek ways to enable a radicalized Alevi youth. In addition, they will definitely try to benefit from trials that are being conducted against Turkey in the U.S. and fabricated documents provided by FETO.

This strategy, which is doomed to fail, may slow down Turkey’s march. However, will never halt it. It will be CHP’s one-way ticket to marginalization.

The Turkish government had commenced to negotiate with the PKK in order to resolve the most prominent issue that it inherited since the very first years of the Republic: the “Kurdish issue”. As a result of Erdoğan’s initiative in 2009, negotiations between the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and the PKK started. After a while, transcripts of proceedings between MIT and the PKK in Oslo were published in a daily. At the time, nobody knew that these were leaked by FETO, which had infiltrated the state and established a parallel structure over 40 years. Only two things were known about this organization then: firstly, it was a religious congregation with a significant financial power that opened schools all around the world and possessed multiple media outlets and business associations. Secondly, they had racist tendencies towards Kurds that were made apparent by their media outlets and speeches by Fetullah Gülen.

Known for being comparatively more sensitive towards Islam than western parts of Turkey, not many in the Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia regions really liked Gülen’s congregation due to their racist tendencies. Moreover, the majority of Kurds who still preserved the medrese and dergah traditions (traditional educational and religious institutions) inherited from the Ottomans didn’t perceive the said congregation as “religious” and didn’t find its leader’s residence in the US ordinary. Even though FETO infiltrated the bureaucracy, military and universities in the region, they were only able to gain a few followers among the people.

On February 7, 2012, during the early hours of the day, a news flash: Istanbul’s Specially Authorized Prosecutor Sadrettin Sarıkaya who was conducting an investigation into the PKK-linked KCK organization, requested MIT Undersecretary Hakan Fidan to come to the courthouse on Thursday. I have to repeat this as it isn’t a situation that could be comprehended at the first. Try to think of this event occurring in the UK. The then Prime Minister Erdoğan and his government initiates a reconciliation and peace process and a prosecutor in Istanbul calls the head of MIT to the courthouse as a suspect!

http://thenewturkey.org/fetos-civil-administrators-and-their-trips-abroad-before-the-coup-attempt/

Istanbul’s Specially Authorized Prosecutor Sadrettin Sarıkaya personally called MIT Undersecretary Hakan Fidan, former Undersecretary Emre Taner, former Deputy Undersecretary Afet Güneş and two other former MIT employees and demanded they give statements as a part of the KCK investigations. The prosecutor was accusing Fidan and his colleagues of having committed a crime for being part of the negotiations with the PKK in Oslo. There was another interesting situation. On the same day, the Prime Minister was in Istanbul to undergo a medical operation, which the public did not know about. However, due to security concerns, the time of the operation was changed. For this reason, when Hakan Fidan called the Prime Minister he was able to talk with him. Erdoğan sensed something foul about the situation and told Fidan not to go to the courthouse and give a statement. Even though Erdoğan said on TV after the incident, “They would first arrest the head of MIT and then me. I had authorized the head of MIT. So, they should personally call me to the courthouse”, nobody – with the exception of those who were interested in the Kurdish issue – cared much about this statement. It was widely known that the prosecutor was close to FETO. However, the incident was perceived by many as the group’s exaggerated sensitivity towards the Kurdish issue rather than a Gülenist attack on Erdoğan and the state.

The Gezi Park incidents in June 2013 followed this event. The protests were initially started by people whose concerns were environmental and who objected to a construction project that was to take place in a park in Taksim. Yet, it didn’t stay as a protest by environmentalists. After a little while Kemalists, later joined by the Alevis, joined the protests alleging that “their lifestyle was under threat.” It became apparent that FETO had a finger in this incident. Gülen and his organization tried to provoke the protesters with their associates within the police force through the use of violence. Zekeriya Öz, a fugitive Gülenist and a former prosecutor, tweeted the following on this subject: “If the PKK had participated in the Gezi Park protests, those who are governing now wouldn’t be in their seats. I don’t know who ordered them, but the PKK didn’t join.”

There were other prominent Gülenists that were trying to spark new conflicts by provoking the protesters that were completely organized over social media. For instance, a renowned Gülenist fugitive Emre Uslu, who now lives in the US, tweeted that PKK militants turned a car over which had female passengers with headscarves in Maltepe, Istanbul (however, such an event didn’t transpire). Efforts to evolve street protests into a civil war through constant provocations were apparent. While Gülen’s media outlets openly supported the Gezi Park protests, the Gülenists changed their tune towards the end when a group in İzmir vandalized their school. Participating in the Gezi Park protests with various reasons and motives, the majority of the youth seemed unaware of this effort to exploit the situation.

We started to hear that a new wave of street protests similar to the Gezi Park protests were to take place in November. These could’ve been just a rumor, of course. Still, I had heard this from an academic who lived in the US and from a journalist that had ties with FETO. The Gülenist journalist had said “I don’t know if 10 or 15 soldiers will be killed, but something will happen and Erdoğan will go.”

6 months after the Gezi Park protests, on January 9, 2013, three women including Sakine Cansız, who was one of the founders of the PKK and who supported the peace process, were killed at the Kurdish Information Bureau in Paris. These killings took place right after the government announced that they were negotiating with Abdullah Öcalan for the resolution of the Kurdish issue. This incident pitted the two sides against each other. It was a sensitive and fragile issue as after all there were negotiations with a terrorist organization and the Turkish public’s top enemy Abdullah Öcalan. The person who was caught by French security forces had a trace of gunpowder on his coat. His name was announced as Ömer Güney. According to the information gathered from the French security forces, Güney was close with the terrorist organization to an extent that he could be deemed a PKK sympathizer. This information consolidated the theories that it was an intra-organizational execution. There was great outrage and this outrage poured onto the street. The funeral of Cansiz in Diyarbakır was attended by tens of thousands of people.

Eleven months after the murder, the December 17-25 operation that was conducted by the Gülenists within the judiciary, security forces and media aiming to depose the government with the accusation that it was corrupt took place. For the first time, regardless of their political views, all witnessed and became aware of the intimidating operational capacity of FETO. During those days, Gülenist media outlets started to spread disinformation that MIT was responsible for the murder in Paris. Moreover, they alleged that Ömer Güney was actually a member of MIT. Yet, almost nobody cared about this subject as there were more pressing issues present.

In January 2014, PKK-affiliate KCK stated that the murder of the three women was carried out by FETO’s members within the state and that Ömer Güney was actively engaged with Gülenists. Ömer Güney, who was to be tried after a two-year long investigation by the Paris Prosecutor’s Office, was taken to a hospital for an ailment in his brain. In January, just one month before his trial, he died. It was later discovered that Ömer Güney was visited by three individuals from Turkey and that those individuals were FETO members.

Then, the terrible event known as the Kobane incident took place. Using Daesh’s attack on Kobane and the alleged inaction by Turkey as excuses, the leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtaş and his colleagues called for countrywide streets protests on October 7. I said to myself “this must be the second Gezi Park protest that was being discussed.” Protesters built barricades and engaged with the security forces. 50 died and 682, 139 of them police officers, were wounded. 1,113 buildings, including 25 district governor offices, 67 police headquarters and 29 political party offices, were damaged.

One of FETO’s media outlets, Zaman Daily’s Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı visiting Diyarbakır’s Mayor Gülten Kışanak and their open support for HDP while the aforementioned events were taking place were intriguing. When news of the visits by HDP deputy Ahmet Türk and former HDP deputy Nazmi Gür’s paid to Fetullah Gülen in 2014 in Pennsylvania was heard, it astonished many. There were many news pieces on FETO providing intelligence to the PKK and deciphering the code names of state operatives within the PKK. How the PKK dug trenches in many cities, especially in Diyarbakır, in order to start a war despite the people’s objections was made clear after the July 15 coup attempt. The FETO-member military officers and pilots bombed the Parliament with F-16s that flew from Diyarbakır. FETO militants did whatever they could to both provoke the public and enable the PKK.

Two years after these events two HDP deputies, one of them in prison, made two statements. These two statements are unprecedented, considering HDP’s disposition in the last two years. In his interview with journalist Ruşen Çakır, HDP deputy Sırrı Süreyya Önder said the following: “October 6-8 Kobane events might have never taken place, because the ‘prevalent state perspective’ [AK Party] was foreseeing solidarity with Kobane. I will be extremely clear about this; the said solidarity was obstructed by FETO-affiliated generals whose roles in the July 15 coup attempt is apparent. They put an extreme pressure on Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Now, generals who commanded the units in Sur, Nusaybin and Cizre are being tried as the perpetrators of the coup attempt. I have seen how these generals obstructed the solidarity between Turkey and Kobane-Rojava.”

Accused of “being a member of a terrorist organization,” “inciting to commit crime” and “inciting the public to unlawful meeting and demonstration,” HDP deputy Ayhan Bilgen made a similar statement very recently during the session of his trial at Diyarbakır 5^th Heavy Penal Court:

“October 6-8 was a demonstration of a civil war in this country. Who incited these conflicts must be investigated thoroughly. It should be investigated whether these were the same people who wanted to depose the elected government on July 15.”

The fog of war is slowly fading, yet unfortunately it isn’t possible to talk about a social base that would support the reiteration of a peace process, not in the short-term. FETO is an important component of this issue and so is the PKK. How these two terrorist organizations came together after years and their role in all that transpired must also be taken into account.

While the July 15 coup attempt and the immediate aftermath produced a unified synergy in favor of democracy, in the year since then this has not been the case. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in particular initially stated they were against all kinds of coups, yet lately they have made certain unjustifiable allegations that could cast a shadow on the process of uncovering the truth about the night of July 15, 2016.

The most obvious indication of a unified anti-coup synergy was the spontaneous reaction by Turkish politicians on July 15 and July 16, and the Yenikapı Demonstration on August 7. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım and the Chairman of Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Devlet Bahçeli announced that they were never-ending advocators of democracy in all circumstances. CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu also made similar strong statements against the coup attempt. The main catalyst for this active resistance against the coup attempt was in fact the message conveyed by President Erdoğan via Face Time that night, when he called for a unified national reaction.

The next day, all politicians formed a more unified nationalist stance against the coup attempt. Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akar too attended parliament at the moment, and was an indispensable component of this anti-coup bloc. In the session, the Chief of the Parliament İsmail Kahraman said “our national anthem is our manifesto and we are all united nation.” Prime Minister Yıldırım said “all those who are involved in the coup attempt are traitors, regardless of their military ranks” after thanking all political politicians for their support. Kılıçdaroğlu said “this is definitely a coup attempt against our Republic and our traditions.” Bahçeli too said that “with the coup attempt, coup collaborators embedded into the Turkish army were identified and clarified.” HDP Chairman Selahattin Demirtaş was not able to attend the parliamentary talks as he was out of the Ankara; however, HDP spokesman İdris Baluken asserted that they were against all kinds of military coups.

The most critical aspects of a joint declaration passed then by the four political parties’ was: “the condemnation of the coup attack against the people and the parliament” and “the protection of the national will by four main political parties in spite of their political differences.” Namely, high political tension among political parties before the coup attempt transformed into a unified national stance against the coup, especially in the first days.

In this atmosphere, the Yenikapı bloc was formed not only by political parties but also by the people, who came from various ideological segments of the society. The most prominent aspect of the Yenikapı bloc was the sharp stance against all kinds of coups and a clarity about the identities and aims of the perpetrators. A national stance, one that included the cooperation of civil and military institutions, soon emerged against FETO, whose mafia-like organization and illegal actions were uncovered. Unfortunately, this unity started to crumble in a short period of time. After the national declaration at the parliament, politicians reiterated anti-coup messages for days; however, the CHP and HDP’s hesitant disposition in this matter distanced them from their initial political reflexes.

The Yenikapı Demonstration on August 7 was organized as the second platform to demonstrate national unity against the coup attempt, after the first one in parliament on July 16. Yet, the HDP was the first to stay out of this second unified platform. Demirtaş made unjustifiable accusations about the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) involvement in the coup, both while he was in Turkey and abroad. Hence, the HDP once again fell into the trap of illegal activities, just like it had with its treatment of Kurdish politics, with its disposition towards the coup attempt. Idris Baluken’s tweet: “AKP-CHP-MHP partnership isn’t new; it’s an alliance against Kurds since June 7 with the excuse of the survival of the state and fight against terrorism” was the confirmation and declaration of the HDP’s excluding itself from the anti-coup alliance. The HDP’s absence at the Yenikapı Demonstration was also a sign of their unsustainable image in the new path of Turkish politics.

On the other hand, the CHP Chairman Kılıçdaroğlu declined to attend the Yenikapı Demonstration initially, saying “Erdoğan tried to increase his political influence on the people through criticizing the opposition party.” However, after Erdoğan and Yıldırım’s insistence, the CHP chairman changed his mind saying “we will attend the Yenikapı demonstration for the same reason we were at the parliament on the night of the coup attempt.” At the same time, he underlined that he would continue to be a legal part of the Turkish politics by accepting the invitation. The MHP Chairman Devlet Bahçeli announced that they were against the coup attempt, and beyond taking part in the demonstration, they also supported the government in these difficult days without wavering.  Bahçeli maintained his stable political stance behind the AK Party during the Yenikapı Demonstration and during the constitutional referendum campaign. The MHP saw itself as an important proponent of the political and institutional change the AK Party wanted to see in Turkey.

As a part of his “No” campaign in the lead up to the 16 April referendum, and a part of his general “anti-Erdoğan” campaign, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu tried again to discuss unproven speculative details of the coup attempt in the public sphere and thus he took unexpected risks both socially and politically. CHP politicians abused clear evidences of the coup attempt for their inter-party politics. By reiterating claims first made by Fetullah Gülen that “the coup was planned and controlled,” the CHP’s view converged with that of FETO.

These statements by Kılıçdaroğlu became a signal of just how marginalized he had become from the national political scene. In order to counteract Erdoğan’s politics, Kılıçdaroğlu started to voice uncertain statements that downplayed the treacherous and violent aspects of the coup attempt. Abstaining from the anti-coup bloc thus was a calculated political mistake, and the balance of national unity was tipped against the HDP and CHP politicians who involved themselves in that alliance.

In the CHP’s report on the July 15 Coup Attempt, the expression “controlled coup” was reiterated. These implications and disinformation about the coup attempt have created a controversial discourse that is also harmful to the fight against these kinds of illegal bloody attacks. In any case, these allegations circulated by the CHP did not bear fruit, and were seen by the public as more attempts by the party to criticize the AK Party’s policies.

What is being done by the CHP and HDP is actually an attempt to downplay the government’s success in thwarting the coup attempt through inter-party political quarrels. Ultimately, the CHP’s allegation that the government – which was in fact the main target of the coup attempt – was responsible for July 15 was viewed by the people as simply a part of the party’s constricted politics.

Following the terrorist attack on the Reina nightclub during the New Year celebrations, a number of messages appeared in social media that praised the callous attack. These messages not only praised the attack but also openly targeted the secular lifestyle. Columnists who are critics of current government policies lost no time in using these messages twisting it to their own agenda, and the lifestyle debate, which had already begun before the New Year, was revived with even more fervor.

As in every year, the lifestyle debate this year took place during the New Year’s celebrations. Glamorous New Year’s preparations and stuffed turkey recipes as well as images of people beating Santa Claus also made its way into the media. But these discussions which have turned into an annual ritual were not very prolonged. So much so that a well-known cleric known as Cübbeli Ahmet Hoca, raised eyebrows when he declared that chess was forbidden, the lifestyle debate was taken out of the context of New Year’s celebrations. But the attack on the nightclub resurfaced the lifestyle debate when the debate had only just bitten the dust.

The President of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) issued a statement regarding the dispute and reaffirmed the public, saying that lifestyles in Turkey were under no threat and protected by the state. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also made a number of statements to dispel any question of a danger to normal everyday life and that it had not been for the past 14 years. Fortunately, many people in the public arena also protested the numerous attempts to link terrorism with the current lifestyle debates – an effort that was seen by many to mask the true face of terrorism – and to prevent the rise of social tensions exploiting a dominant social pattern in Turkish society.

Terror attacks allegedly made in the name of Islam in Turkey are not dissimilar to those that have taken place in Europe. No doubt that these attacks are intended to convey messages to both the targeted country and the world. Many terror experts agree that terror attacks often have many other goals than the incident itself. It was evident that the rampage at Reina was intended to disrupt and create a tension on the secularist-conservative duality balance in Turkish society. However, there are structural obstacles to activate this line of tension.

Firstly, the relationship between state and religion in Turkey is unique to the country and it has capacity to cope with this tension. Moreover, the tension has long become a central dynamic for Turkish society, in which both conservative and secular segments transform one another. The Diyanet, the view of leading political parties, and also the tendencies of these two groups themselves guarantee the presence and futures of secularists and conservatives in Turkey. Occasional conflicts and tensions between secularists and conservatives, though sometimes disturbing, should be seen as natural in this way.

In fact, Turkey’s modern political history is almost based on this disturbing tension. For example, the February 28, 1997 coup was a severe blow to the large number of conservatives and to their upward mobility. But, by the end of the process, the conservative block achieved in winning the political power that opened new spaces for secularists and conservatives to engage one another and even to establish new alliances. Since then, there is no doubt the lifestyle debate in Turkey has become less intense under the Justice and Development Party (AK Party). The official Islam portrayed by the Diyanet does not posit it as a religion against or in relation to secularism. Turkish Islam marries both traditional Islamic and traditional secular practices shaped within the same tradition. In Turkey, neither Islamic nor secular practices resemble those in Europe, especially when one considers the transformative power that each group is able to exercise over one another. On the other hand, religious communities in Turkey, nourished by various Islamic sources, draw their justifiability by the very presence of the Diyanet, with the institution owing this to the high level of its social acceptance.

Nevertheless, the controversial field has occasionally been exploited by other groups, and the Fetullah Gülen Terror Organization (FETO) has been a bitter example of this. The group turned into a terror organization gradually in the last three years. But it should be remembered that the group owed its success largely to infiltrating state institutions by disguising themselves as secularists. The group, which principally promised upward social mobility to middle classes conservative Muslims by offering them a quality education, exploited the secular-conservative tension and found room for hiding its various illegal and unlawful acts. The official Islam in Turkey represented by the Diyanet acts as a guarantor, which can call various religious sects (cemaats) in the country to account. The presence of the Diyanet is also a guarantee for secularists. Although some statements of certain Muslim clerics caused contention, especially among conservative people themselves, outlandish statements are generally viewed with a veiled sarcasm. What is important to remember is that the secularists in Turkey generally do not give credit to radical interpretations of the religion they believe in.

The debate on lifestyles between secularists and conservatives and its association with increasing social tension is actually related to the nation’s past experiences. Secularists are afraid that conservatives are eager to take revenge for the February 28th coup, which caused much suffering and traumatized many of them. Indeed, the secularists see it a zero-sum-game: if religious life is not constrained, their own lifestyle would then be under threat. They are disturbed by official praise for religious life and believe that this praise poses a threat and jeopardizes their own lifestyle. However, the struggles in the political sphere should not lead us to overlook the class features of secularist and conservative circles that have been intertwined in the last twenty-thirty years.

There are two major political parties in Turkey that represent both lifestyles: the AK Party and the CHP. Despite this, boundaries of secularism and religiosity are neither solid nor static. With the AK Party government, the conservatives found opportunity to express themselves, while this led the secular circles to have concerns about their future. This anxiety was expressed during the 2013 Gezi Park protests, in which the secular wave created almost a kind of terror in the country. Yet a critical view on the Gezi protests enables us to see that it was not actually secularism, producing terror but the involvement of certain ideological groups, mainly radical leftist groups, which terrorized the protests.

Additionally, some ethnic groups in Turkey could negatively contribute to the secularist-conservative tension. For example, when the HDP, a Kurdish nationalist political party with separatist tendencies, realized that it cannot merely survive with the votes of Kurds, it aspired to gain secular Alevi votes and prepared an Alevi “package” claiming to meet their identity demands. Indeed, the overlapping of secularist-conservative tension with ethnic separatism is a worst case scenario for Turkey, and has the real potential to give birth to brutal conflict. On the other hand, ethnicity-based ideological tensions regard the division between the secularist-conservative lifestyles a favorable ground to exploit. But the peculiarity of state-religion relations in Turkey structurally prevents manipulations in this field.

The strength of the secularists-conservatives duality, which Turkish society was built upon, finds the beginning in the birth of the Republican Era. Today, political parties still pay attention to this tension and win votes through it. However, secularism and religiosity/conservatism, though in a conflict, have created their own idiosyncrasy in Turkish society. Seculars and conservatives experience and discover one another in this process. Both are being diversified, intertwined and transformed. The transformation of this into terror is possible only through an intervention or by way of a non-local force from outside of the social formation. This unique relationship of secularism and religiosity/conservatism in Turkey becomes even more critical in a period when terror is rising in the name of Islam around the world.

Turkish politics has flared up after the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have jointly proposed a constitutional reform bill. The reform bill seeks to move Turkey’s government system towards presidentialism. It introduces a severe system of checks and balances, or separation of powers by splitting the elections and operation of the executive and the legislative. The rationale behind this political move, as in many occasions allegedly voiced by the AK Party, is to avoid coalition governments and promote democratic politics as opposed to a bureaucracy. The AK Party asserts that coalition governments carry the danger of political instability and jeopardize democratic politics by opening up room for extra-political forces such as the bureaucracy.

Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), takes the lead against the reform bill. The CHP focuses on the end results of the system change and criticizes the amendment by arguing that it will turn Turkish politics into an authoritarian regime. Its main thesis is that it is likely to abolish the parliament and put an end to the republican regime. Yet, a closer look at the content of the reform bill reveals that the parliament will be intact. Nevertheless, it will lose its centrality after the center of gravity in the government system slides towards the executive. So this change does not pose a transgression on the republican order; on the contrary, it may reinforce the republican regime by boosting equality among citizens and giving a central role to the society in politics.

A closer look at the content of the reform bill reveals that the parliament will be intact.

Turkey’s Odyssey to the “Total” State

The Turkish state’s transformation from being a neutral state to a total state took place in a gradual manner. In the long nineteenth century (1808-1923), the monarchy was enervated by the bureaucracy and finally left its place to the republic in 1923. Although Turkey was established as a republic, at least in theory, it was an oligarchy in practice. So the state remained a neutral state for a long time. The bureaucratic oligarchy in Turkey might be divided into two periods. The one-party regime until 1950 and a multi-party parliamentary regime under the bureaucratic tutelage from the 1950s to the 2000s.

The general elections in 1950 were the first open and free elections of the republic. After the elections, the state opened up its doors to the society by allowing a multi-party parliament. The parliament, which used to be populated by merely the CHP, started to host the Democrat Party (DP). The DP attracted the support of the voters in the periphery and held the parliamentary majority with its successive electoral victories until the 1960 military coup.

http://thenewturkey.org/parties-politicians-and-dispositions-towards-the-july-15-coup-attempt/

The 1961 Constitution drafted after the coup redesigned the state-society relationship. It created a parliamentary system under the supervision of the bureaucratic elites. The parliamentary system under the tutelage of the bureaucracy limited the intrusions of society into the state. This was facilitated mainly by dividing the parliament into two chambers. The upper house was populated by the appointed members of the bureaucracy and served to control the lower house which hosted the representatives of the people. This was endorsed by installing more bureaucratic institutions to contain the political sphere.

The 1982 Constitution, on the other hand, redesigned the state-society relationship in a new format. It was drafted after the 1980 military coup, which came after the Kemalist state lost control of the society and that led to bloody clashes between the far-right and the far-left societal groups in the streets. The 1982 Constitution, therefore, gave emphasis to the executive branch in order to strengthen the state vis-à-vis the society. It divided executive power between the president and the cabinet of ministers. The president’s main role was to keep the cabinet and the parliament in line with the state.

After 2002, the AK Party started to dismantle the bureaucratic tutelage. The 2007 constitutional reforms introduced direct election of the president by the people. It thus transformed the presidential office from being the gate keeper of the bureaucracy to being the representative of the society. The president used to be elected by the parliament with the bureaucracy’s tacit permission. This was followed by the 2010 constitutional reforms that further curbed the bureaucratic tutelage by reforming the judiciary, especially limiting the powers of the military courts. The current reform bill seeks to continue this process of democratization by opening up the state to societal forces by moving the regime towards presidentialism.

The Crisis of the “New CHP”

The post-2002 period figures as the acceleration of Turkey’s evolution into a total state. This fundamental transformation in state-society relations has urged political parties to reconsider their political positions and discourses. The most radical change has taken place with the CHP.

Despite the fact that it has never won an open election to form a single-party government, the CHP’s secular-nationalist Kemalist ideology has always been in power. Hence, the CHP has always sided with the state in critical times against the society. It single-handedly ruled the state under a one-party regime during the period of 1923-1950. After 1950, it acted to protect the state from the intrusion of societal forces based in the periphery. Thus, it has strived to contain the parliament and placate democratic politics in order to maintain the “Kemalist” state.

The CHP’s struggle to protect the Kemalist state was carried out on the basis of its secular-nationalist ideology until around 2010.

The CHP’s struggle to protect the Kemalist state was carried out on the basis of its secular-nationalist ideology until around 2010. In 2010, the CHP not only changed its secretary general, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu replaced Deniz Baykal, but also it started to shape its politics around liberal-democratic ideology. With the liberal turn, the so-called New CHP has moved its politics from the protection of the state to the limitation of the state. More specifically, the CHP started to utilize liberal-democratic discourse in order to interrupt Turkey’s evolution to be a total state.

It has sought to form a political bloc with the anti-AK Party societal elements. The sole success of this liberal-democratic politics might be cited as the general elections held on 7 June 2015. For the first time the AK Party could not gain a parliamentary majority to form a single-party government. However, the other three political parties in the parliament also failed to carve out a coalition government. This led to a replaying of elections on 1 November 2015. The elections resulted in a landslide victory for the AK Party. This was the starting point of the crisis of the New CHP.

With the liberal turn, the so-called New CHP has moved its politics from the protection of the state to the limitation of the state.

However, this was followed by the gradual increase of terrorist attacks on Turkish soil. The PKK, the FETO, and Daesh have targeted the country. The most important breaking point was the failed coup attempt perpetrated by the Gülen terror group on 15 June 2016. After 15 June, Turkish society united against terrorism, which was dubbed as “Yenikapı Ruhu,” or the Spirit of Yenikapi, referring to a historic rally against the coup. Yet, this climate of societal unity soon ended and political parties divided into two opposing blocs. The AK Party and the MHP joined forces on the basis of a conservative-nationalist ideology, or so-called “authentic and national” politics (“yerli ve milli” siyaset). The CHP and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), on the other hand, formed a tacit political bloc on the basis of a secular-leftist ideology. This has deepened the crisis of the New CHP.

The CHP-HDP bloc struggles to contain the AK Party-MHP’s joint project of reforming the state through empowering the executive by moving the government system towards presidentialism. The former constitutes the “NO” bloc whereas the latter the “YES” bloc on the current constitutional reform. If the “NO” camp loses in the coming referendum (which will probably be held in early April) and the presidential system is institutionalized, Turkey’s gradual evolution to a two-party political system around the division between conservative-nationalist and secular-leftist ideologies, which is currently underway, will continue and consolidate.

The CHP-HDP bloc struggles to contain the AK Party-MHP’s joint project of reforming the state through empowering the executive.

In this picture the CHP may stop swinging between liberal-democracy and secular-left ideologies by downgrading its emphasis on a liberal-democratic discourse, which mainly serves to limit the state and locks the CHP into being merely an opposition party. Thus, it may move secular-left ideology more into the center of its party politics. If that happens, then, it marks the end of the New CHP and perhaps causes a rift in the party’s leadership. Nevertheless, the CHP will have to take a more centrist and positive political discourse by moderating its emphasis on secular-left identity to become an alternative under Turkey’s new political conditions.

Turkish politics is currently polarized by the debate over a constitutional reform bill. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have jointly proposed a constitutional reform bill to shift Turkey’s parliamentary system towards a presidential system. These two political parties defend the bill by arguing that it will boost Turkey’s democracy. Yet the opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), strongly oppose the bill by claiming that it will lead Turkey into an authoritarian one-man rule.

The opposition contends that the new constitution weakens the parliament to the extent that the presidency amasses all the powers in its hands. This will leave the government without a system of checks and balances and end the rule of law. So it sets forth a regime change, namely the end of Turkey’s republican order. The AK Party and the MHP, in response, propound that the new constitution provides better conditions for reflecting the popular will in the government. So it does not end Turkey’s republican order; on the contrary, it improves the republican order by empowering the society over extra-political forces such as the military and civil bureaucracy.

Indeed, this debate reveals the main fault line in Turkish politics. Turkish politics is primarily determined by the conflict of two historical blocs, the secular middle class and the masses in the periphery. The secular middle class, which constitutes the minority in society, figures that its interests will be best served as long as the parliament holds the central place in politics. The peripheral societal forces, which constitute the majority in society, seek to push the executive to the center in politics. The former believes that the minority will have more say in politics as long as the parliament holds a focal point. The latter thinks that the majority will get its due share in power as long as the executive occupies the central place in the political system.

So we have two competing views of democracy at hand. From a liberal perspective, democracy simply refers to the limitation of power. From a conservative perspective, democracy refers to the rule of the people, namely the concentration of power in people’s hands. While the opposition holds on to the former, namely the negative view of democracy; the AK Party and the MHP sticks to the latter, namely the positive view of democracy.

Parliamentary System under Bureaucratic Oligarchy

To put the matter in a historical perspective, the majority’s choice of positive view of democracy is tenable. The secular middle class organized around the bureaucracy ended the Ottoman monarchic regime in 1922 and established the republic in 1923. This regime change brought about another significant change, it ended the “neutral” state and replaced it with a “total” state. With this transformation of the state, the absolute separation of the state from society came to an end. The state and society, therefore, became enmeshed through political parties. The political parties became the most significant political actors.

Yet, the newly established republic was unable to deal with the disrupting effects of pluralism in society. The state found the solution in strictly separating itself from the society. It kept the parliament at the center of politics but the parliament was restricted to a political party, namely the CHP. The two attempts, one in 1925 and the other in 1930, to install multi-party systems failed.

Hence, the state under the control of the bureaucratic elite formed an oligarchic rule. It single-handedly decided on who should rule and be ruled. The nationalist-secular middle class values drove the line that divided the ruler and the ruled. The political actors with “secular” values were granted the right to rule, whereas the others with “conservative-religious” values were reduced to be ruled. Thus, the state evolved back to a neutral state. The state is off limits to society.

The period of 1950-2002 witnessed a process of controlled opening of the state to society. The bureaucratic oligarchy allowed a multi-party system. The political parties such as the Democrat Party in the 1950s and the Motherland Party (ANAP) in the 1980s dominated the parliament and challenged the hegemony of the bureaucratic elite. The former broke down after the military coup in 1960, whereas the latter collapsed within itself and lost its parliamentary majority after the leadership change.

Besides, from the mid-1960s to the 1980 military coup, the state lost control of the society. The parliament fell short of absorbing pluralism, and this unrestricted ideological polarization unleashed bloody clashes on the street, especially from the mid-1970s till the coup. In the 1990s, with the decline of ANAP, the number of parties in the parliament rose. The parliament absorbed pluralism to an extent, yet it failed to provide a working coalition government to sustain political stability. This weakness of parliament eventually pushed the state to a deep legitimacy crisis in the late 1990s.

Democratization of Parliamentary System

However, after the AK Party came to power in 2002, power has gradually shifted from the secular middle class to the masses in the periphery. This power shift led to two important constitutional reform bills in 2007 and 2010. They were designed to curb the power of the bureaucracy. The constitutional reform in 2007 brought the popular election of the president. The presidential office, which was granted broad powers by the 1982 constitution, used to be elected by the parliament and served as a gate keeper for the bureaucratic oligarchy. The 2010 constitutional reform, on the other hand, reformed the judiciary system by limiting the powers of military courts.

These institutional changes were accompanied by the process of sociological equalization within the society. This change in the distribution of power in society and the loss of power urged the opposition to launch a new political discourse which targeted the AK Party with a negative view of democracy. It constantly criticized the government for establishing an authoritarian rule. In the meantime, the power vacuum in the bureaucracy was filled up by the Gülenists. Starting from 2012, the opposition and the Gülenists began to team up against the AK Party. The Gülenists attempted a coup twice. One through the Judiciary on 17 and 25 December in 2014. The other was through the military on 15 July 2016.

Upon these onslaughts against the government, the AK Party and the MHP agreed to embark on a new constitutional reform on 1 December 2016. The 2016 reform aspires to empower the political infrastructure of the country by shifting the government system towards presidentialism. It mainly seeks to shift the center of gravity towards the executive branch within the political system and strengthen democratic politics versus extra-political forces, namely the bureaucracy.

Presidentialism and the Republic

With presidentialism, the government seeks to strike a delicate balance between two opposing forces in society, pluralism and stability. Thus, on the one hand, it seeks to sustain pluralism in society by keeping the state open to the whole society. On the other hand, it struggles to maintain political stability by steering political parties to the center.

Indeed, this has been the basic motivation of the 1982 Constitution. It installed a multi-party parliament while introducing a 10 percent election threshold. More, it split the executive between the president and the council of ministers. The president, who was planned to be elected from the cadres of bureaucracy, was granted more powers and was supposed to keep the government in line with the bureaucracy.

The current constitutional reform shares the same motivation, emphasizing stability at the face of centrifugal societal forces, but with a caveat. First of all, it unites the executive by abolishing the office of prime minister. Second, it separates the presidential election from the parliamentary elections. Third, it deprives the parliament of its power of a vote of confidence. The parliament keeps its other powers that enable it to check and balance the executive, such as calling for new elections, debating and approving the budget, etc.

Thus, the constitutional reform that seeks to shift the government system towards presidentialism abides by the basic democratic norms. Moreover, it may serve to further the democratization of the country and create a better republic. Indeed, a republican order requires two conditions. First of all, it underlines the fact that rule is supposed to be a political rule, namely there should be no categorical difference between the ruler and the ruled. It is the rule by the people for the people. Secondly, the rule is supposed to be based not on power but rational discussion. Having equality and cultural and economic homogeneity among the members of the political community is a sine qua non of a republican order. These measures constitute its genuine and actual basis.

Furthermore, the current constitutional reform may endorse the process of sociological equalization and promotes cultural and economic homogeneity among the citizens without forsaking societal differences and pluralism. This is because it puts a premium on democratic politics in the face of extra-political forces and pushes political parties to address the whole society in order to get elected. In other words, it rules out coalition governments and shifts the center of gravity in the state towards democratic politics. In short, it gives priority to society’s will.

Last week we visited Diyarbakır, where we met the Governor of Diyarbakır, Huseyin Aksoy, about the reason why operations in Sur lasted longer than other terror operations in the region. Governor Aksoy said that the operation took longer than expected because the government was being careful not to cause any civilian casualties. Aksoy said security forces were ordered to be very careful and responsive to locals during that process. And he added the operation took so long because of the PKK’s trenches, hundreds of which had been dug across Sur’s narrow streets. Almost 23,000 people living in Sur had to leave their houses, in order to avoid being caught in the clashes. The office of the Governor of Diyarbakır put some of these displaced families into hotels and some into guesthouses. The rest of the displaced moved into their relatives’ houses. It should be pointed out that this displacement is not a positive situation, and locals need a sustainable way to continue their lives. Right now, the displaced have no good memories about having to leave home, but there was no other choice for the government, because the PKK could use them as human shields.Sur is among the most disadvantaged districts in Diyarbakır. The PKK targeted Sur on purpose, because the region’s most fragile and poor people live there, that’s why PKK terrorists could easily force them to leave their homes, or threaten and intimidate them into doing what the terror group wanted, even forcing some to give their children as fighters for the PKK. It is very similar to DAESH’s strategy of recruiting fighters from largely Muslim ghettos in France, for instance.Meanwhile, interestingly, there was not even one ditch in the Diclekent or Kayapınar districts of Diyarbakır, where many prominent figures like Selahattin Demirtaş, Altan Tan live. To be sure, there are hundreds of possible reasons behind the PKK’s choice to stay out of these areas, maybe Selahattin Demirtaş living there is one reason, but there are some other reasons we need to analyze properly.

Interestingly, there was not even one ditch in the Diclekent or Kayapınar districts of Diyarbakır, where many prominent figures like Selahattin Demirtaş, Altan Tan live.

Most of the PKK’s funders are businessmen living in Diclekent and Kayapınar, where you can find very luxurious restaurants, coffees and houses. In a sense, the PKK could not touch their lives, their comfort zone. While these financiers were responsible for the PKK’s operations, they lived in neighborhoods far removed from the consequences of their funding.

Sociological Gap in Diyarbakır

We could not easily say that Diyarbakır’s sociology is fine now. The people of Diyarbakır look a bit tired and confused. Tired of being instrumentalized by the PKK and the HDP. But somehow people are trying hard to return to their ordinary lives.

When we walked around the streets of Sur, we saw that people could finally open their shops up, because the PKK, which used to intimidate them into closing their shops to send a political message, was no longer around. Another interesting situation is that interest in any gatherings or protests has gone down. In 2015, for Nowruz celebrations, almost 200,000 people gathered in Diyarbakır, however in 2016 only 18,000 people gathered to celebrate the festival, despite frequent calls from the HDP and the permission of the Governor of Diyarbakır. Can we conclude that people were afraid of going out and celebrating Nowruz? Absolutely not, we can conclude that people are very tired and from now on they just look for peace in Diyarbakır. Nowruz, a traditional new year celebration, used to turn into a pro-PKK protest praising all types of violence and threats against Turkey’s solidarity. Because of this over politicized and violent discourse at the festival in Diyarbakır, people no longer want to participate in this so-called “cultural celebration.”

One evening during our stay in Diyarbakir, Aysel Tuğluk, HDP’s leading deputy, was taken into the custody. I was around the Diyarbakir Court House incidentally, and surprisingly, there was no one in front of the courthouse for protesting this decision. I checked media coverage to see if people were not aware of it, but in fact there was plenty of breaking news about the detention. Yet there was not even one person to protest. In short, the people of Diyarbakır ran out of patience, and they have no tolerance for any calls for violence or clashes. They just want to return to their normal lives without any terror, any clashes, and any threats from the PKK and HDP.

The people of Diyarbakır ran out of patience, and they have no tolerance for any calls for violence or clashes.

They are silent and passive to all the things happening around them. This current situation in Diyarbakır is a kind of sociological gap. People have some ideological and political hesitations about what they really should do. Some of those I met put lots of stress on the question of what would happens if the government sits at the negotiating table with the PKK again? Despite the all anti-terror operations, all the political discourse against the PKK and HDP, people are still keeping this possibility in their mind. And they are afraid of this scenario, in which the PKK gets control again and takes revenge on the people. The government must gain the confidence of the people about these fears; otherwise this gap could create a boomerang effect against the normalization process of the city.

The Need for a Social Risk Map

To capture the full Diyarbakır picture, there is an urgent need for a social risk map of Diyarbakır. Mapping the social risks in the city, actually in the region as well, is the most important preliminary work before applying social policies. This means putting together a general picture of potential risks to the communities of Diyarbakır. An index could be developed to figure out the most fragile parts of the social structure, which may include: average household income, the unemployment rate (especially for youths), mobility over one year, drop-out rates at schools, crime rates and so on. After this, the most fragile parts can be identified, and social policies can be applied according to this index.

For now, the Governor and the municipality conduct some social projects for youth in particular. To build more sport centers and to renovate youth centers in the city, the Ministry of Youth and Sport has recently provided 16 million TLs. The Ministry of Family and Social Policies also provides similar funds for rehabilitation works. This support is very significant, but still needs to be systematized by the social risk map created, according to the social needs of the city.

Academics living in Diyarbakır point out that young people are radicalized by the racial and violence oriented narratives of the PKK and HDP.

While doing this, there are two important priority areas: education and religious affairs. Almost all people we met in Diyarbakır, academics, public authorities, NGOs pointed out these two significant areas. If the government and local authorities could create long-term coherent policies for education and religious guidance, normalization could be achieved in Diyarbakır. Otherwise in a couple of years, we may witness the same clashes in the city’s ancient streets.

Academics living in Diyarbakır point out that young people are radicalized by the racial and violence oriented narratives of the PKK and HDP. This increases the anxiety of the youth in the city, and makes them vulnerable to being instrumentalized for street clashes. Now families are looking for alternatives to save their children from the threat of the PKK and HDP. Public authorities and NGOs have to put forth alternatives to rehabilitate the young people of Diyarbakır. Actually at this point, Kurdish youth need to have a new dialogue without any type of violence or hatred. What Kurdish youth really needs is to have a positive agenda to focus on their future’s plan, especially in terms of education and employment. In brief, any social policy or project that does not reach the youth will not succeed in ensuring a normalization process for the communities in Diyarbakır.

The optimistic climate which the reconciliation process created, came to naught, and the region’s economy suffered greatly as a result. The PKK, meanwhile, accelerated its propaganda campaign and searched for ways to create legitimacy for its attacks by controlling the social sphere, particularly in east and southeast Anatolia.

A New Concept for Counter Terrorism

Turkey has taken conclusive steps to overcome the security concerns created by the PKK. One of these steps, following the words of President Erdogan, was to initiate a constant fight against the terrorist organization. Hundreds of PKK militants have been neutralized with this strategy. The government took control of the transit routes used by the PKK in the mountainous areas. It also largely eliminated the social pressure and the oppression of the PKK’s urban structures in the cities. The second strategic step taken in the struggle against the PKK was to limit its social and political activities. Several media organs and associations that the PKK used as its propaganda machine were closed to reduce its public visibility and to limit its provocations. It was within the same strategic framework that some of the deputies and mayors of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) were taken into custody. As in the case of Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-leader of the HDP, many of these deputies and mayors were charged with crimes of “establishing an organization to commit crime,” “being a member of a terrorist organization,” and “being a member of an armed terrorist organization.”

Social Anger towards the HDP

In two elections held in 2015, the HDP gained momentum in the east and southeast. The party had significant success at the end of the Turkish general elections on June 7, 2015 and entered the Grand National Assembly with 80 deputies. Although its power partially shrunk, the HDP became the third largest party in the National Assembly with 59 deputies when the results of the compulsory early elections held on November 1, 2015 were announced.

It is appropriate to use the term “power poisoning” to explain what happened after the election. The HDP had become radicalized, hardened, and began to have a similar discourse and policy with the PKK. The statement of Figen Yüksekdağ, the co-leader of the party, was a clear challenge: “We lie our back on the PYD [the Democratic Union Party] and the YPG [the People’s Protection Units].” With the call of Bese Hozat, the co-chair of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the PKK had initiated the so-called “Revolutionary People’s War” in the months to follow. The PKK militants and its sympathizers paralyzed the daily life of the Kurds when they brought guns to the cities and dug trenches in the streets.

Dozens of people, including children, elderly, and women were killed after the PKK’s DEASH-style car bomb attacks, which aimed to hit the main cities of the country such as the capital Ankara and Istanbul. The HDP, however, has never shown the expected attitude towards the PKK-initiated violence. The Kurds’ expectation from the HDP was to have a high-level political discourse, which would counterbalance the PKK’s terrorist activities. They were greatly disappointed. Selahattin Demirtaş and other deputies chose to remain silent against the PKK domination that began on the evening of the 7 June, 2015 elections. The HDP thus suffered a great loss of prestige in society.

Voices from the streets

It is important to note that the streets in Turkey’s southeast remained calm in the wake of the steps taken by the Turkish authorities to counter terrorism. I had the opportunity to witness the strong roots of this discreet approach during my recent visit to Siirt and Batman. My interactions with the local population of these cities helped me to understand the discreet attitude of the street at the following four junctures:

When the HDP reached its peak

One should carefully read the reaction of the Kurdish population living in the region to the imprisonment of the HDP co-chairs, some deputies, and mayors, as well as the appointment of custodians to the local municipalities. Regardless of whether it really happened or not, an anecdote that I heard in Siirt demonstrates that the majority of the local population was alienated from the HDP’s politics and politicians. The anecdote tells us that an HDP mayor who was going to be taken into custody in a few minutes looks at the entrance gate from the window of his office and states that “if we had won the hearts of people, there would be tens and thousands at our door, but now there are not even a handful men in front of the door to stop the police officers from entering the building.” He then regretfully said to those around him: “there is nothing to do.”

People tell each other, in the form of urban legends, what some of the custodians who are appointed to the municipalities achieved in just 2-3 months compared with what the DBP municipalities have done in 4-5 years.

Although dozens of mayors have been taken into custody from the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), the HDP’s fraternal party in the region, the locals did not show any reaction. The reason behind the lack of local support for the DBP is the fact that the DBP municipalities have spent their time and energy on PKK propaganda, instead of serving the public. People tell each other, in the form of urban legends, what some of the custodians who are appointed to the municipalities achieved in just 2-3 months compared with what the DBP municipalities have done in 4-5 years.

They also talk about certain groups, which the municipalities have enriched by transferring resources and awarding them the contracts. It seems that there were three interrelated factors at work when it comes to the alienation of the Kurdish population from the HDP and its associates: the HDP had a discriminating attitude in its relations with the society. It transferred the economic resources to certain interest groups, and moved closer to the PKK at the height of its political power. The prevailing public opinion among the Kurds is that if the HDP had moved in an opposite direction and had not received this many seats in the parliament, the situation would be different. They, on the other hand, still consider their votes for the HDP as a positive development since it helped them understand the real intentions of the party and witness how it suffered from “power poisoning.”

The “I voted for peace” discourse

“I voted for peace” is one of the prevailing discourses among the locals in the region. The discourse, often expressed by HDP voters, is pronounced as a sign of regret. “I would never vote if I knew the HDP would follow such a way,” one local told me on condition of anonymity. “We voted since we believed that the PKK would withdraw and the civilian politicians would stand against the armed terrorists. The HDP, however, treated us as an apparatus to contribute to the PKK’s war and used our votes as a demonstration of power to increase its political violence. We expected the HDP leaders to strengthen civilian politics and to contribute to an everlasting peace when the party gained 80 deputies in the June 2015 elections.” On the streets of Batman and Siirt, it is almost common to hear “did you also vote for peace?” statement, which the local Kurds use in an ironic way to make fun of how they were deceived before the elections.

“We won’t make you president”

One of the common arguments people used to criticize the HDP politics is the “we won’t make you president” campaign slogan by Demirtaş, targeting President Erdogan. Demirtaş used this slogan for the first time at a party group meeting in the Assembly amid loud applause. This sharp political move increased the reputation of Demirtaş and opened space for him in the Dogan Media group’s coverage of the elections. It is no doubt that the “White Turks” were very much pleased by this statement. The Kurds, who voted for the HDP, however, had a hard time understanding the basis and the aims of this political move at that time. Now, they realize that this political discourse was detrimental to their interests. Most of the Kurds believe that Demirtaş lost great prestige among the locals with this sharp political move since the expression “we won’t make you president” was wrong and had no rational basis for the Kurds. This statement is now one of the main arguments that the Kurds used to direct their criticism towards Demirtaş.

The PKK terrorist attacks damaged the regional economy

The Turkish economy remains robust in the face of global fluctuations, manipulations, and impositions. The economic conditions, however, have put pressure on people. The implications of the economic struggle are more visible in the Kurdish-populated regions of eastern and southeastern Anatolia. The threatening atmosphere that the PKK terrorism created, the efforts of the terrorist organization to prevent state investments, and the tribute that the PKK had asked from private investors, made the conditions harder for the region’s economy.

In Hasankeyf, a shopkeeper who welcomed us in his carpet shop said that the last time he sold a carpet was one and a half years ago. It was an appalling moment.

The security threat posed by the PKK has squeezed the daily life of the Kurds in two ways: dozens of Kurds, including children, lost their lives during the terrorist attacks. The PKK militants looted their houses, burned their businesses and vehicles. The flow of tourists to the region came to a halt. In Hasankeyf, a shopkeeper who welcomed us in his carpet shop said that the last time he sold a carpet was one and a half years ago. It was an appalling moment. Directing his anger to the PKK and HDP, the shopkeeper told us that one and a half years ago, Hasankeyf was filled with both local and foreign tourists.

There are also other factors that played a role in the collapse of the HDP’s politics: The PKK’s killings on June 6-8, 2014 and the devastation of the trench and barricade warfare that the PKK had launched in southeast Turkey after the June 7, 2015 elections. The terrifying memories of these events are still alive. People tell each other the stories of how the PKK terrorists forced old men to dig trenches in the streets and desperate women to leave their houses when they learned that a tunnel would go through their bedrooms.

Perhaps many of the Kurds have not yet spoken aloud, but the clear majority has deeply buried the PKK in the very trenches that the terrorist organization had dug in their inner worlds. Even in the regions where the HDP has received close to 100 percent of the vote, the Kurds have not abided by the PKK’s calls for street rallies or boycotts. The reason behind this is the fact that the Kurds condemned “trench politics” and denounced it as tyrannical.

As the PKK declared the end of the 29 month long ceasefire in the Summer of 2015 and murdered two policemen in their sleep in their apartments on 22 July 2015, Turkey started its counterterrorism operations as a response (by the way, multiple news sources in Western media also tends to tell the story in the reverse order by starting it with the Turkish police and military operations against the PKK and then mentioning of the PKK violence as if it was a reaction to the operations). It is no secret that Turkey is in the midst of a tough counterterrorism policy after almost two years of efforts to find a political resolution to the problem. Yet, representing Turkey’s tough counterterrorism policies as targeting women’s rights in Turkey and stressing the PKK’s ostensive democratic struggle is far from the truth, no matter how often we hear it in Western media.Here, we follow the mainstream lead and omit the PKK’s definitive feature, terrorism. This is, of course, not a fair way to discuss the PKK, which, just in 2016 has murdered four AK Party politicians of Kurdish origin, threatened millions of Kurdish AK Party voters with the same end, killed over 150 Turkish citizens in 8 separate suicide bomb attacks, and killed hundreds of soldiers, police, and Kurdish village guards. The Kurdish origin of the murdered AK Party politicians and village guards must be stressed because the very same circles in the West are eager to depict the PKK terror as a war between Turks and Kurds. Putting all these biases aside, let us focus on the PKK and its democratic gender policies. Let’s see how the PKK liberates the Kurdish woman.

For the PKK, the Kurdish woman is oppressed under the patriarchic structure of Turkey’s Kurds living in rural areas of southeast Turkey, which is not an incorrect diagnosis. But the PKK’s problem with women’s liberation is not with its diagnosis but its treatment. The PKK promises Kurdish women freedom in its own ranks. So, it is not enough to seek equality but to do it in the PKK’s ranks. HDP MP Sabahat Tuncel summarized this point of view best in her speech a few years ago at a memorial event for Zeynep Kınacı, a PKK member who blew herself up in a suicide attack, killing 8 Turkish soldiers along with herself. In Tuncel’s words, “Comrade Zilan [the code name for Kınacı] is a significant name for the liberation movement. Comrade Zilan did not only detonate the bomb on her body against the system, but also against the male-dominated system.” Or you can listen to the life story of another Zilan in the PKK’s propaganda movie Bakur (2015) where she tells how she liberated herself by joining the PKK at the age of 14. It seems like the PKK does not only liberate women by arming them, but also children. This is the kind of gender liberation that the PKK envisages.

What comes next after cheering for PKK’s liberation of Kurdish women is its so-called radical democracy. These lines of depictions connect the PKK’s liberation of women to its radical democracy project. Nevertheless, to the surprise of the international audience whose primary source of information is the New York Times or other leading Western mainstream media outlets, the PKK, like pretty much all other armed organizations, is not and cannot be a democratic organization.

The PKK defines itself as an organization that is based on the principles of “democracy, gender freedom, and ecological life” in its so-called “constitution contract” (KCK Sözleşmesi). Yet, in practice, it is as democratic as Kim Jong Un’s Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The PKK in its practice and in its basic contract (KCK Sözleşmesi) is clearly a totalitarian organization. The disparity between the democratic principles of the contract and the organization’s practice does not require an evaluation. Here, we are talking about an organization relying on the tactic of terrorism that praises the right to live as “the most basic, inalienable right” while sending its suicide terrorists to blow themselves up among crowds in urban metropoles.

It is very unfortunate that we are living at a time when we have to debate with many Western colleagues that a terror organization like the PKK is not a civil society organization working to improve women’s rights or democracy.

Apart from the theory-practice dichotomy, the contract is a contradiction in itself. While repeatedly claiming to establish a radical democratic system throughout text, it also singles out the leadership/önderlik (the PKK’s founder Öcalan) with the right to “represent the entire society in every aspect.” The PKK simply replicates Kim Jong Un’s Democratic Korea in a non-state organization. The PKK’s radical democracy is a system of one man’s unquestionable authority. That is the reason why the organization has one male and one female co-leader for each position except for its top leadership.

It is very unfortunate that we are living at a time when we have to debate with many Western colleagues that a terror organization like the PKK is not a civil society organization working to improve women’s rights or democracy. It is like having an argument with somebody who takes the terror side of DAESH as an omissible detail and praises the organization just because they fix damaged roads and asphalt them and hence facilitate transportation in Raqqa. It is trivial to argue with a PKK sympathizer scholar, journalist or politician (that you run into easily in mainstream Western media, academia and parliaments) who think the PKK is a sweet organization that helps the cause of women. Yes, if you ignore the terror side of terror organizations, what is left is peaceful. PKK leader Öcalan’s celebrating of Women’s Day on every 8 March does not make his organization a civil society organization. The PKK is no FEMEN, it is a terror organization, and this is not an omissible detail but the part that needs to be focused on.

In a nutshell, in an average Western mainstream paper, this is how you read about the PKK: The PKK is an organization that works for women’s rights in Turkey (and they also happened to kill a few thousand Turkish citizens, send suicide bombers to metropoles, assassinated politicians, teachers, and imams both of Kurdish and Turkish origin, massacred Kurdish villagers who sided against them, and executed dissidents within the organization itself). Moreover, the PKK is a democratic organization (whose leader is declared to represent the entire society in every possible aspect and therefore his will is the people’s will and therefore he has the final decision-making authority). Not to forget, one of the culprits of the latest PKK attack in Dolmabahçe was claimed to be a woman, who liberated herself by detonating a bomb-laden car among crowds that killed dozens of people and injured more than a hundred.

European countries, the so-called cradles of civilization, the advocates of democracy, are scandalously supporting and backing unscrupulous terrorists and their followers.What started as an “Anti-Erdoğan” policy, especially since the Gezi Park protests, has now turned into a dangerous attitude supporting terror, a fact that should actually horrify the world, yet, tragically, seems as if nobody is aware or feels ashamed of.I do not intend to say there is no need to plead for Turkey’s policy of investigating organizations and individuals who support and act on behalf of terrorism. This is already self-evident. The opposite would have been improper and peculiar. Is there any country on this planet which is not trying to counter domestic terrorism to provide security for its people and nation?However, that is not the point. The point is how Western countries inconceivably and scandalously embrace terrorists as a state policy.

There is an idiom in German, which says, “I think I am in the wrong movie” (Ich glaube ich bin im falschen Film) to describe a situation, which is totally incomprehensible and nonsensical. This idiom describes exactly the position of Europe, especially Germany, but also the position other pro-PKK European politicians and countries take currently on issues concerning Turkey.

Imagine there is a newspaper in your country (here the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet), which leaks official secrets on its front page. It is indeed an opposition media organization, but this does not matter in this case at all. Besides, the so-called leaked information is more a defamation against the state than representation of the truth. It was a story about trucks used by the MIT (National Intelligence Service of Turkey). The trucks were on a secret mission carrying humanitarian aid to displaced people in Syria.

The state of course investigated the responsible people, especially the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Can Dündar. However, foreign diplomats, the representatives of various nations in Turkey, attended the trial and took group selfies to show support for Dündar. This behaviour does not meet international standards of diplomacy. What is more, recently Germany gave him citizenship out of a clear blue sky. Since then, Can Dündar has been honoured with an award for freedom from the city government of Paris. It is also worth pointing out that he won a Freedom of Press Award.

If Dündar is a journalist, then, one wonders why Edward Snowden is charged with treason. Instead of being honoured with a German citizenship and awarded with a freedom of speech award, Snowden is imprisoned in an embassy for years without any attention from Western state leaders. Quite tragic. If Snowden could succeed at just being enough anti-Erdoğan and leaking things putting his personality or the Turkish government in a tight spot, he could have higher chances of being embraced by Germany. Pity for him.

Yet, what are we supposed to do with ethical journalism when it comes to leaking official secrets? Is the leaking of official secrets something that be considered part of the freedom of the press? It is doubtful. If the criminal act committed by Dündar is considered a matter of freedom of press, then, how should we evaluate Snowden’s case?

Germany, in fact, generally seems to have no problem receiving all kinds of people looking to thwart democratically elected governments, including coup plotters, with open arms.

Firstly, the man now referred to as President of Egypt, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has been welcomed as a “democrat.”  Sisi got no private lessons on democracy and human rights from top German officials, as it is often done enthusiastically with Turkish president Erdoğan. It seems like Germany has sometimes a problem with elected presidents when it comes to coup plotters. Besides, el-Sisi has been “democratized” with a magic wand, namely a newspaper article by Germany. The same magicians apparently work to make a dictator out of Erdoğan through media coverage. That is not how it should work with democracy and dictatorship.

Take for instance the case of FETO (Fetullah Gülen Terror Organization). Western countries again seem to be failing at taking the right position and supporting democracy, liberty, and freedom in Turkey. Germany opened its arms to the coup plotters, allowing them to remain in the country and seek political asylum. So, what was the fault of Syrian refugees? Was it that they were running for their lives and sought shelter in Europe?

The PKK and its affiliated terrorist organizations are responsible for at least 7 suicide attacks in the last two years in Turkey, and have killed more than 600 people, 377 of them from security forces. In the midst of intensified PKK violence, the HDP co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ said their party “leans on the PYD”, the Syrian branch of the PKK.  HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş openly praised an independent Kurdistan in Turkey and said, “There will be the reality of Kurdistan in the next century.”

HDP lawmakers also apparently never see any harm in attending PKK terrorists’ funerals. There is clear evidence that HDP MPs and municipalities backed PKK terrorists. Consequently, they lost their immunity and then now face legal prosecution.

Unsurprisingly, Germany was very reactionary, eager and supportive of the HDP politicians turning a deaf ear and blind eye to their ties to PKK.

Does it still make sense to re-emphasize that the PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by several states and organizations, including NATO, the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. A differentiation between “my terrorist” and “your terrorist” does not help to build world peace. Nor representing the operations against the PKK and its supporters as violations against the Kurdish people.

We believe we are in the wrong movie. The supposedly universal standards of democracy are upside down and hardly recognizable. A democratic state taking a hard line with terrorists and coup plotters is accused of being undemocratic, while criminals are welcomed and praised in Western democracies.

Western critiques and objections from certain domestic circles are doomed to be ineffective against the current hardening security policy and widespread domestic support for such policies. In order to trace this situation, one needs to go back to the PKK’s turn to violence in the Summer of 2015.This most recent round of the terrorism-counterterrorism cycle started as the PKK announced the end of its 16 month-long ceasefire on 11 July 2015, citing the construction of new dams and military outposts in southeast Turkey as its reason. A few days after the announcement, Bese Hozat, co-chair of the KCK (which is the umbrella term that PKK calls itself now) declared “a people’s revolutionary war” on July 15th, and was soon joined by his co-chair Cemil Bayık. On July 19th, Bayık ordered the PKK mass base in southeastern Turkey to arm themselves, erect barricades, and dig tunnels and ditches for the revolutionary war.

The battle started as the PKK murdered two policemen while they were sleeping in their homes in Ceylanpınar, Şanlıurfa on July 22nd. What followed was the Turkish state’s restarting of military and police operations against the PKK. As the PKK put its urban warfare in action in towns under the rule of HDP mayors, municipal vehicles were used by the PKK to dig trenches in roads and plant bombs. As a reaction to the PKK’s urban warfare (which was a real war by the way, as the PKK started it with mines, bombs, and RPGs, and Turkey responded first with police teams and then with military operations including the use of tanks), Turkish security forces declared curfews in combat zones and detained HDP mayors in those towns. This marked the starting point of the HDP detentions.

What followed was the replacement of those mayors with centrally appointed trustees (kayyum) and the spread of these replacements to many other HDP municipalities. As a reaction to the trustee appointments, the PKK declared that they will target trustees as well as the AK Party’s local politicians in the region. And it did. The PKK murdered Naci Adıyaman, the youth branch district chairman of the AK Party in Şırnak, and Ahmet Budak, the AK Party’s Hakkari candidate in the November 2015 parliamentary elections. The PKK continued its attacks against the AK Party politicians in October 2016 with three murders: Aydın Muştu, AK Party’s Van, Özalp district deputy vice chairman, Deryan Aktert, AK Party’s Diyarbakır, Dicle district chairman, and Mehmet Şefik Doğu, the assembly member appointed by the trustee at Erciş Municipality. Besides those murders, the PKK has also detonated bombs in AK Party headquarters and trustee appointed municipal buildings in the region.

Along with the ongoing military operations against the PKK, the HDP co-leaders Selahattin Demirtaş, Figen Yüksekdağ and nine other parliamentary deputies were arrested as another stage of Turkey’s war on terror.

Once we see this flow of events starting from last summer in one piece, then what comes next is to analyze the reasoning of the related actors: Why did the PKK murder AK Party politicians, and why were the HDP mayors and MPs arrested?

The PKK’s reasoning is simple as usual. They started a “revolutionary urban warfare” that was supposed to defeat Turkey, “liberate” those towns from Turkey and establish its de facto autonomy in the region. As the PKK failed to take HDP-ruled municipalities directly under its sole control, it even lost its indirect rule in those towns after the detentions of HDP mayors and trustee appointments. The only way for the PKK to claim that it is still controlling the region was to kill unarmed AK Party politicians, which it did. The message was, “if my politicians cannot rule, yours cannot either!” Nevertheless, what the PKK fails to see is the AK Party government has new priorities now. The PKK’s decision to return to its terror attacks after the so-called Reconciliation Process (Çözüm Süreci) closed the negotiation door for an unforeseeable time. And there is now no domestic or international factor that can change the AK Party’s decision to restart a security-first oriented approach to the problem.

The AK Party already had some internal dissent in its mass base against negotiating with the PKK during the Reconciliation Process. And now there seems to be no single trace of pressure from the party’s popular base to return to the negotiations after the PKK reinitiated violence. The MHP’s popular base almost entirely, and the CHP’s popular base in a significant degree, seem to embrace the military struggle against the PKK’s terror. With such a composition, the AK Party’s current counter-terrorism struggle has a wide range of support in society according to the leading survey companies in Turkey such as GENAR, ANDY-AR and A&G. The negotiations with the PKK ended with its turn to violence. The PKK took the HDP’s electoral success as direct support for itself and hijacked the HDP votes with its urban warfare in places where HDP rules. The overwhelming idea in society is that the PKK is using the HDP for recruitment, propaganda and logistical support purposes, and it even uses HDP-ruled municipalities as its safe havens. The government’s solution to this problem now seems to be breaking this logistical link between the HDP and PKK by arresting the HDP mayors in those municipalities as well as the HDP’s leadership with no significant domestic objection to that in the AK Party’s, MHP’s, and, to some extent even CHP’s mass bases.

While there is no strong domestic objection to the detainment of the HDP politicians, international pressure seems to be ineffective as well. Especially after Western reactions to the coup attempt on 15 July, 2016 and the American military support for the PKK’s partner organization PYD in Syria, on top of the never-ending accession process with the EU, both the EU and the United States lost their leverage on Turkey. Hence, the American and European critiques will not change the AK Party government’s decision to fight against the PKK on all fronts, including both its military and political wings. There seems to be no reason for AK Party politicians to change their mind.

The loud objections from the US and EU fall on deaf ears in Turkey, as the AK Party no longer considers them credible partners. Turkey’s current security-first orientation and the jailing of HDP politicians may not end the PKK terror for once and for all, but with the given parameters, there seems to be no factor to persuade the government to change its approach towards the PKK and the HDP.

Peace processes are complicated and fragile, facing a multiplicity of internal and external challenges. As a conflict lingers, the number of challenging issues and people affected increase exponentially. The most challenging stages of a peace process are often carried out secretly away from public scrutiny. However, a peace process cannot persist without some form of public approval or, at least, popular recognition both during the negotiation process and after a deal is reached. This is why public diplomacy and a communication strategy are critical pillars of any successful peace process. In many instances, traumas and memories of the conflict overshadow hopes for peace and reconciliation. The failure that the Colombian peace accord has faced in the referendum and Turkey’s failed peace initiatives to resolve the Kurdish issue mark some of the complexities of peace processes.In a democratic country, both elections and referendums play a significant role in shaping the direction of the peace process. More importantly, the complicated internal dynamics of the peace process need to be coordinated and tuned harmoniously to reach long-lasting peace. If not coordinated well, peace accords reached at the elite level can be challenged by either bureaucratic establishments or the public. Unrealistic agreements to bring about the anticipated outcomes within a reasonable period of time are also doomed to fail. For this reason, in the past, more than 40% of peace agreements failed within the first five years of their signing. Revising an accord is a more preferable option than pushing for an unrealistic agreement in terms of reaching sustainable peace.

The Colombian Experience

The Colombian government and the FARC rebels struggled to reach a peace agreement for almost half a decade and recently came to the point of agreement to terminate the conflict that had been ongoing for more than 50 years. Colombia’s peace agreement between the government and the FARC rebels was overshadowed by the referendum on October 2, 2016. The referendum demonstrated the unwillingness of the majority of Colombians to accept the terms of the peace deal signed between the government and the leaders of FARC. The referendum does not mean the complete failure of the peace process but it does signify the failure of public diplomacy and leadership. A slight majority of Colombians disapproved of some of the measures in the peace accord. The most controversial part of the accord concerned the future of the FARC militants and the government’s security personnel who were involved in inhumane actions during the conflict. Those who had committed war crimes or atrocities during the conflict would have reduced sentences and the majority of FARC militants would be granted amnesty, if the accord was approved. President Juan Manuel Santos, who very recently won the Nobel Peace Prize of 2016, was unable to push the terms of the accord and he is likely to be criticized for the results of the referendum. There are many lessons to be learned and insights to be gained from Colombia’s experience in terms of maintaining a successful peace process.

Balancing the traumas and losses of the past and expectations for the future, balancing the concerns of the victims/victims’ families and the perpetrators, balancing the peace and justice components, and at the same time convincing the people of the necessity for change is a delicate task. There is a multiplicity of stakeholders, issues, thresholds, and critical moments. Handling a successful peace process necessitates well-balanced and well-managed relationships among all of these dynamics. For the decision makers, maintaining an effective peace process requires a wide range of skills. As can be seen in the Colombian case, public support for the peace process is critical and becomes more important in democratic countries.

Turkey’s Reconciliation Process

In the recent past, Turkey experienced the impacts of a failed peace initiative in Cyprus. Kofi Annan’s peace deal regarding Cyprus was rejected in the Greek Cypriots referendum in 2004, despite the Turkish Cypriots’ approval. The failure of the Annan Peace Plan halted Turkey’s EU membership process. A more dramatic example from Turkey are the failed peace initiatives relating to the Kurdish issue. The lack of public support for the Kurdish peace initiatives affected the AK Party government’s peace efforts twice in the last decade. Turkey’s earlier peace initiative, the “Kurdish Opening,” was overshadowed and halted after the ceremonial return of 34 PKK members from the Habur border gate in October 2009. More than 50,000 people celebrated the return of the PKK militants in the border town of Silopi. This event led to public outrage in the rest of the country and the government backed down from the process. This development signified the role of strong public support in Turkish government.

Elections are also important tests for leaders who take the burden of peace processes. A sharp decline in public approval during the peace process may constitute a serious set-back. A dramatic decline in votes for the governing AK party at the June 7, 2015, general election was a serious blow to the “Reconciliation Process.” Despite this, immediately after the elections, the “Reconciliation Process” came to an end due to the PKK’s attacks on Turkish security forces that were mostly related to the developments taking place in Syria and Iraq. The June 7 elections were, at the same time, a serious test for the Kurdish peace initiative, and strong support for the governing AK Party might have ensured that the process endured. Following the reign of PKK violence, the HDP, the Kurdish ethno-nationalist party represented in the assembly, was chastised by the public in the November 1 repeat elections. The HDP’s votes in the general election declined from 13.12% to 10.76%. The AK Party’s new anti-terror campaign boosted popular support for the party in a very short period of time. The AK Party increased its popular support from 40.87% to 49.5%. This dramatic change was not due solely to the peace process, but the process did play a significant role. It is always crucial for political leaders to retain public support and to boost approval. Leaders with weak public backing cannot hope to make peace in democratic countries.

Peace Processes and Public Opinion

The failure of the Colombian referendum to ratify the peace accord will not necessarily end the process. This failure may slow it down, but what has been achieved so far is an important accomplishment. If the parties are sincere and maintain their commitment to the process, the terms of the peace deal might be re-negotiated. The situation is bleaker for Turkey due to the level of violence caused by the PKK in the aftermath of the failure of the peace process in July 2015. What is promising for Turkey is the experience of rapid normalization during the peace process. Despite the uncertainties in Iraq and Syria, the public in Turkey may push the government for a new chance. Without a clear roadmap, guidelines, contingency planning, and a public diplomacy framework, the government is unlikely to meet the challenges and uncertainties of a revised peace process.

On the other hand, legislative immunity aims to protect a deputy from arbitrary and unfounded inquiries. Article 83 of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey provides that members of the Assembly shall not be liable for any criminal action unless the Assembly decides otherwise. The execution of a criminal sentence imposed on a parliamentary member either before or after his/her election shall be suspended until s/he ceases to be a member. This is the kind of immunity which was subjected to an amendment in Turkey today.

The kind of immunity that protects a legislator from criminal proceedings, as in Turkey, does not exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Canada.

There are two root causes as to why the issue has always been revisited and discussed. One reason is that immunities are broadly protected by the Constitution against criminal proceedings; and the other is that legal requests for the removal of immunities are not brought to the agenda and not processed for further action at the Assembly.

The guarantee of immunity granted to the legislators in Turkey seems to have been more extensive compared to the Western democracies. The kind of immunity that protects a legislator from criminal proceedings, as in Turkey, does not exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Canada. The immunity is applicable not in criminal actions but in private/civil law in these countries.

A member of the parliament who is alleged to have committed an offence in connection with a lawsuit cannot be arrested or detained. In other words, a deputy cannot be arrested or detained if s/he fails to honor a debt in a civil lawsuit. However, the immunity in these countries is practically meaningless because being indebted is no longer a reason for an arrest.

In several countries of Continental Europe, such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Denmark, legislators enjoy a similar parliamentary immunity to their counterparts in Turkey; and such immunity is applicable in criminal actions. Yet, the majority of the countries above have remarkably narrowed parliamentary immunities in conjunction with the consolidation of the principle of rule of law and of public trust in Judiciary.

A wide range of exemptions on immunities have been introduced. Legislators may be detained in flagrante delicto. In Turkey, however, the exemption is applied only if a lawmaker is caught in the act of committing a crime punishable by a heavy penalty. Besides, it is also seen, in general, that parliamentarians can be judged unless immunity protects one against any kind of criminal proceedings and unless measures that necessitate deprivation of liberty, such as arrest or custody, are applied.

There were even legislatures who carried weapons or PKK militants in their vehicles. An HDP parliamentary member paid a condolence visit to the family of the suicide bomber behind the Ankara attack that claimed 37 lives.

In short, the scope of immunity in European countries is narrower than that of Turkey. In addition to such an extensive guarantee of privilege the second point, that has led to flare ups on the issue, is the scarcity of files brought on the agenda and put in process against legislators, although in each legislative term hundreds are prepared with requests to suspend immunities of lawmakers in the Assembly.

This is in contradiction with the purpose of immunity which is to protect legislators against arrests, arbitrary and unfounded inquiries – particularly to those open to provocation of the Executive power. In fact the Legislative body itself is protected here, rather than legislators, and the reason for such protection is to ensure the proper operation of the legislative body.

Notwithstanding, hundreds of files with requests to revoke immunities of some legislators are not even on Parliament’s agenda and that leads to criticisms in the public domain that immunities go beyond the protection of legislative functions, and therefore of public interest, and provide deputies the “privilege of crime”. Based upon similar criticisms, amendments to narrow immunities were made twice (in 1999 and 2001), but rejected in Parliament.

In July 2015, the PKK terrorist organization resumed terror attacks and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) representatives at the Assembly organized events to effectively support the PKK, called for violence and issued statements in favor of terror. There were even legislatures who carried weapons or PKK militants in their vehicles. An HDP parliamentary member paid a condolence visit to the family of the suicide bomber behind the Ankara attack that claimed 37 lives. The visit, in particular, ignited public reaction. Due to this incident and similar others, hundreds of files prepared by prosecutors and courts were sent to Parliament. Public reactions and relevant dossiers against legislators have fueled debates again for lifting parliamentary immunities.

The AK Party submitted a motion to Parliament for a constitutional amendment. However, the proposal seeks a temporary clause on the pending immunity dossiers, not an amendment or the removing the Article 83. A temporary clause in the Constitution would allow revoking of immunities of lawmakers whose dossiers are already in Parliament so that they can be investigated and judged.

There are two reasons behind the AK Party’s motion for a temporary clause on the existing immunity files rather than an amendment to the Constitution. The first is that when the issue of immunity is revisited, the opposition asks for the removal of all immunities. In fact, the removal of the HDP lawmakers’ immunity is open to discussion; many, including HDP deputies, ask for lifting of all privileges not of the immunities of a certain party or a legislator. In addition, a particular criticism being voiced is that the AK Party legislators have plenty of immunity dossiers and they are benefitting from the current immunity from prosecution. With the AK Party’s motion, a solution is proposed to eliminate these criticisms and public reactions against the HDP deputies in Parliament.

The second is that examination of each and every immunity dossier would take months due to the procedures stipulated in the Parliamentary Bylaws. The AK Party wishes the elimination of immunities of all the lawmakers, not only those of HDP.

The AK Party has opted for a collective regulation to remove the immunities of not just the above HDP members but of about 130 lawmakers from all parties.

Nonetheless, applying the method stated in the Constitution and the Parliament Bylaws will keep the Assembly busy for a long time and not allow it to perform any other tasks. In fact, this is emphasized in the reasoning of the proposal and it is calculated that it will take eight months for the Parliament to process all files if the existing method is applied.

In addition to their concerns about possible reactions against those who may be incriminated, the Government and the AK Party seem sensitive to judicial procedures to which the legislators whose immunities are revoked may be subjected. It is considered that the public at large, electors, and supporters of such legislators will react against custody, arrest or ill-treatment of their representatives in question.

The negativities that occurred during the elimination of the Democracy Party (DEP) lawmakers’ immunities in 1994 are still lingering in memories. On the same page, several concerns are expressed that the removal of immunities granted to HDP legislators alone will cause similar reactions and an emotional break-up, narrow the sphere of politics, and create an excuse for violence.

Due to this reason, the AK Party has proposed the regulation for all of the immunity dossiers in the queue at the Assembly not only for those of the HDP. Besides, the statements released by the AK Party signal that the ruling party wishes to avoid the repetition of the outbursts in 1994 and aims for the legislators to stand trial without arrest.

The AK Party’s proposal will be discussed in Parliamentary Constitutional Commission in the coming weeks, and will be promptly transferred to the General Assembly. Since the AK Party suffers from the absence of a majority to pass this amendment, it sought the support of the opposition parties. Although the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) announced their support for the motion, some CHP deputies have said, since day one, that they will not back the proposal.

A full support is expected by MHP in the voting, but a substantial number of CHP deputies will say “no” to the proposal. Still, it is likely that Parliament will pass the proposal of the AK Party. The statements of HDP leaders reveal that they would resist the adjudications. Thus, the trials of HDP legislators who may lose their parliamentary immunities will pre-occupy the agenda in the upcoming months.

Turkey has been the target of intensive terror attacks recently. The Reconciliation Process ended with the PKK attacks. Hundreds of security forces along with some civilians have lost their lives during this period of the conflict. In the meantime, actions and statements by the HDP legislators have caused public uproar and reactions. The AK Party has opted for a collective regulation to remove the immunities of not just the above HDP members but of about 130 lawmakers from all parties, whose dossiers are awaiting process at the Assembly. The AK Party’s motion for a temporary constitutional amendment is an attempt to find public satisfaction without narrowing the sphere of politics.

The theoretical aspect of the settlement process embraced a threefold position.  The first represented “the rights-centered approach” and was based on the notion of political equality between Turks and Kurds as basic to the redefinition of citizenship in constitutional terms. The two other component of this position were intertwined and involved local administrative or political centrifigulism that can be described as local or regional self-rule, expressed in the PKK’s political discourse as “democratic autonomy.”The scope of self-rule can be formulated as a kind of shared sovereignty as seen in federal political structures or as a form of administrative self-rule, a variant of unitary political systems. The third form of centrifigulism may emerge at the regional level that may or may not require the sharing of sovereignty.The post-2013 process of settlement created a plural political environment conducive to the elaboration of all political options for the solution of the age-long Kurdish issue in a peaceful and democratic way. This contributed to the belief in the possibility of the successful resolution of the issue through democratic negotiations in both Turkish and Kurdish popular understanding. Thus, for the first time in Republican history “the Kurds’ right to secede” was uttered loudly and without any legal sanctions by Kurdish nationalist activists and political parties.

During the settlement process, a strategically motivated tactical approach was masterminded by the PKK-HDP side, however. The latter used the time span of the process as an opportunity for the consolidation of their hold on the Kurdish populace as their instrumental support base. The HDP through the political discourse of going beyond an ethnic Kurdish party and becoming a Turkey-wide political formation procured the support of the socialist Turkish left, and increasingly turned into a platform of anti-Erdoğan rhetoric as reflected in the 2014 presidential campaign of Selahattin Demirtaş, the leader of the HDP. The prevailing motto of Demirtaş’s political campaign was “We will not allow you to become president.” This was a kind of demonization of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the main political figure thanks to whose political will the Kurdish issue became a clause in the chapter of politics.

The campaign proved to be inconclusive, but powerful enough to sever ties between the “negotiating parties.” Added to this was the IS offensive against the city of Kobani that triggered the arousal of a pan-Kurdish feeling among Kurds. This was again used as an influential step by the PKK-HDP block in order to modulate the process for their sectarian political gains. In the end, when Erdoğan witnessed the political cost of the process, he declared that “there is no negotiation table anymore” and put an end to the process. Ready for a new phase in their military campaign, the PKK, who gained advantage of the process by transferring heavy weaponry and militants into city centers, murdered two police officers in their homes in Suruç in July 2015 and ended the ceasefire. PKK leadership has two new block-partners in this new war: on the one hand, the Russians, the Iranians and the Assad regime through the PKK’s Syrian branch, the PYD,  and, on the other, the military support of the US who saw the PYD as a substitute power for its own soldiers in the field war against IS. Again, all anti-Turkey calculations were masked under the pretext of the war on IS that ended up with generous support delivered to the PKK via the PYD.

On top of all this, the HDP adopted a political discourse during the PKK offensives in cities, namely Diyarbakir, Sur, Cizre, Silopi and Nusaybin, amenable to declaring it PKK’s legal wing. HDP municipalities allow their vehicles to be used by PKK militants to dig the trenches and build barricades in city streets. Thus emerged a non-peace positional equation which came into existence by the maximalist political stance of the PKK-HDP block, and AK Party’s turn to its statist shield nurtured by the age-long survival syndrome shared by the ruling Kemalist establishment in the past.

The dramatic rupture that led to the renewal of the conflict through violent means carried the sides back to their original positions: integration  through assurance of political equality vs some form of shared sovereignty, be it local self-rule, federation, or independence. The conclusion that can be drawn from the experiences of the settlement process is that the solution may lie somewhere in the middle; the implication of which calls for the creation of “a politically space” in the form of a negotiation space, not one of political opportunism. What is obvious is that an enduring solution is possible only with the support and will of the AK Party, and it is not possible if the PKK-HDP block opposes it. It is the AK Party that holds the capacity to introduce political, legal and economic standards, and it is the PKK-HDP block that may contribute to the process by not resorting to violence.