The International Community’s Clear Double Standard: All Anti-Democratic Actions in Turkey Must be Strongly Condemned, Including Those Against the Kurds
Washington Kurdish Institute
May 14, 2019
The results of Turkey’s local elections on March 31 came as somewhat of a shock to the country’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The AKP lost its majority, even in its stronghold of Istanbul, which has been a place of consistent Islamist political support over the past 25 years. Yet these democratic results have been stifled: after the AKP denied them and pressured the Turkish Supreme Electoral Council (YSK), the council made a final decision on May 7 to re-run the local election in Istanbul. This decision by the YSK sparked an international outcry, as Germany, France, and the European Union all denounced it. The YSK, much like other institutions in Turkey, is under the control and influence of the AKP, and their decisions are made predominantly through political calculations and for anti-democratic ends.
And this is not the first time the YSK has made radical, substantial rulings in favor of the AKP and Erdogan. For example, during the same recent elections the YSK nullified the election wins of various Kurdish mayoral candidates who previously held office; the YSK’s pretextual argument was that since these individuals had been sacked by the Erdogan regime in 2016, they were ineligible to hold these positions now. These actions are made even more outrageous in light of the fact that the same YSK also approved these Kurdish candidates to run in the elections and even, after a long bureaucratic procedure, issued them with certificates of approval to participate in the election.
Yet the YSK’s anti-democratic behavior here goes even further: after deciding to remove the Kurdish winners, the YSK did not allow the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) the option of replacing the winning candidates with other candidates within the HDP. Rather, in another move in favor of the Erdogan regime, the YSK granted these mayoral positions to the AKP, arguing that they should go to them as the second-place winners.
One would think that such blatant anti-democratic actions would garner huge international outcry. Yet the YSK’s nullification of clear democratic winners received very little coverage or reaction from the international community. In fact, the majority of countries remained silent.
The rerunning of the Istanbul elections is certainly a clearly anti-democratic action that must be condemned. Yet, the Turkish government and Turkey’s ethno-nationalist political parties have taken similar, if not worse, anti-democratic actions against the country’s Kurdish population for years — and many of the same governments and organizations strongly condemning the Istanbul rerun elections have remained strikingly silent in the face of such anti-Kurdish illiberal and anti-democratic oppression. Since 2015, the HDP and other Kurdish political parties and actors have faced election fraud, the destruction of Kurdish homes and property, and the forced displacement of thousands of Kurds by the AKP and other anti-Kurdish entities. In addition, the AKP, with the help of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), stripped dozens of Kurdish lawmakers, including senior leadership, of their Parliamentary immunity. It’s only recently that the CHP has finally tasted the injustice of Erdogan and the AKP’s anti-democratic actions with the Istanbul election rerun; for, the CHP allied with the AKP for many years in similar actions against the Kurds.
And yet the international community continued to remain silent about Erdogan and the AKP’s animosity towards the Kurds while immediately responded with “concerns” over the Istanbul election do-over. The main difference between the former and the latter is that in one situation the victims were from the too-often ignored Kurdish ethnic minority. But this is nothing new for Kurds across the globe. The international community has been blatant in its blindness too if not outright contribution to discrimination against Kurds in Iran, Iraq, and Syria as well. In Iran, millions of Kurds live under a dictatorial regime that has massacred and oppressed its Kurdish community for over 40 years. In Iraq, the international community and regional powers squashed Kurdish attempts at self-determination after the autonomous Kurdish region held an Independence Referendum; on the ground, the Kurds were subjugated by Iranian-backed militias while the United Nations remained silent. In Syria, despite their heroic fight against and defeat of ISIS, and despite their establishment of a radically democratic and egalitarian system of government, the Kurds were slaughtered and displaced during a Turkish invasion of Afrin; again, here the international community remained silent. The fate of the remaining unoccupied Kurdish regions of Syria remains precarious, with its borders being threatened both by the Erdogan regime in Turkey as well as the Assad regime in Syria.
And in Turkey the story of the Kurds has been little different, having experienced brutal repression from the AKP and the Turkish military following the November 2015 election rerun. In fact, the AKP’s decision to hold new elections that year came after the HDP were able to prevent the AKP from winning a majority. The AKP response to these clearly democratic results was to end the peace process between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkey government, and launch a devastating war throughout the Kurdish region. And yet, despite the HDP’s decision in 2016 to stand by democracy and denounced the attempted coup against the Erdogan regime, the AKP took aim at the HDP and the Kurds as the biggest targets of the post-coup political oppression (an era known among many Kurds as one of “political genocide”).
These most recent anti-Kurdish actions by the YSK in 2019 include:
- In Baglar District, Diyarbakir Province: The HDP candidate, Zeyyat Ceylan, won the mayoral election with 70.34% of the votes. Ceylan was removed by the YSK and replaced with an AKP candidate who received 25.46% of the votes.
- Tuşba District, Van Province: The HDP candidate, Yilmaz Berki, won the mayoral election with 52.93% of the votes. Berki was removed by the YSK and replaced with an AKP candidate who received 39.37% of the votes.
- Çaldıran District, Van Province: The HDP candidate, Leyla Atsak, won the mayoral election with 53% of the votes. Atask was removed by the YSK and replaced with an AKP candidate who received 43.43% of the votes.
- Edremit District, Van Province: The HDP candidate, Gulcan Kacmaz, won the mayoral election with 53.81% of the votes. Kacmaz was removed by the YSK and replaced with an AKP candidate who received 41.79% of the votes.
- Tekman District, Erzurum Province: The HDP candidate, Muzahit Karakus, won the mayoral election with 48.53% of the votes. Karakus was removed by the YSK and replaced with an AKP candidate who received 46.5% of the votes.
Today, the AKP-led government (in coalition with ultra-nationalists), headed by Erdogan, has put thousands of Kurdish politicians, journalists, and activists behind bars. The CHP is the next target for Erdogan and his party in its effort to consolidate absolute power in Turkey. The CHP is not able to stand alone against the AKP’s fascism unless the CHP opens up to the idea of Kurdish rights and demands. As for the international community, they should be vocal and supportive of all the components of Turkey’s society who are suffering from repression, not only the CHP. They should also push the CHP to abandon its old-fashioned, bigoted rhetoric against the Kurds and encourage the party to unite its efforts with others like the HDP to stop Erdogan and his dictatorial ambitions.