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.

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.

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.