Washington Kurdish Institute
December 1, 2020
Before 2015, no political party seeking to address the concerns of the approximately 20 million Kurds people living within Turkey’s borders had been elected to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM), the country’s parliament, and the Kurdish or pro-Kurdish politicians who were elected to parliament were compelled to run as independent candidates and their power as representatives was diluted. Indeed, in addition to enduring forced assimilation, displacement, massacres and ethnic cleansing, the Kurds of Turkey faced many obstacles to gaining any sort of effective political representation within the framework of Turkey’s supposedly democratic system. By law, candidates running for parliament on a party list in Turkey must win at least 10% of the national vote to enter parliament – the highest such electoral threshold in the world, and one that, for decades, prevented pro-Kurdish parties from entering parliament.
In Turkey’s June 2015 general elections, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a progressive party representing the interests of Turkey’s Kurdish people, exceeded the 10% threshold, winning over 6 million votes and taking 85 of the parliament’s 550 total seats. The HDP was founded in 2012 as a new party after at least five Kurdish political parties were shut down by the government since 1991. Since the 1990s, tens of Kurdish politicians were assassinated by the Turkish intelligence and death squads. While the HDP included many veteran Kurdish politicians who were previously members of these banned political parties, it also included various other social democrats as well as non-Kurdish leftists. The HDP waged a spirited campaign and had broad appeal, winning seats not only throughout Kurdish majority areas of the country but also in Istanbul and Ankara. To Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the HDP played the spoiler in this surprising election, depriving the AKP of a parliamentary majority for the first time since 2002. Erdogan’s response was swift and showed characteristically little regard for the will of the people – in November 2015, after ending a peace process with the Kurds and reinitiating war against them as the Islamic State (ISIS) waged war and committed countless massacres in neighboring Syria and Iraq, Turkey held its second general election of the year. Erdogan’s AKP recaptured a parliamentary majority and, while the HDP lost votes relative to the June elections, the party nonetheless received 10.7% of total votes to remain in parliament, this time as the third largest party.
After HDP’s historic entry into parliament, the party was soon targeted not only by the ruling AKP but also other political parties, including the People’s Republican Party (CHP), which has been Turkey’s main opposition party since the AKP’s rise to power. For example, when Erdogan ended the peace process with the Kurds and launched military and political wars on the Kurds, the CHP voted in favor of the Erdogan’s bill in 2016 to lift the immunity of lawmakers under investigation, a measure meant to target members of parliament from the HDP. Soon the bill passed and was signed, dozens of Kurdish lawmakers had their immunity stripped and were detained – some of them are still in prison today. The ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), now a coalition party of the AKP, cheered this move, consistent with their history of uncompromising denial of Kurdish rights and the Kurdish identity itself.
The historic June 2015 elections marked the end of unchecked electoral domination by the AKP, and the emergence of new political parties, even in the face of increasing authoritarian by Erdogan. The AKP, which itself has been gradually purged of members, including high profile founding members, who were not completely aligned with Erdogan. To date, at least three major figures within the AKP have left the party to join or form other parties. Former Prime Minister and once prominent ideologue Ahmet Davutoğlu launched a new party in December 2019 called Gelecek (The Future Party). Davutoglu has not made any concrete proposal to address the Kurdish question, stating that he accepts the existence of the Kurdish issue but wouldn’t negotiate with HDP. While his party had made some emotional statements calling for action on the Kurdish issue, these seem no different from similar statement made years ago by Erdogan before he centralized power and expanded Turkey’s war against the Kurds within Turkey’s borders and beyond. In fact, one senior official of the new Gelecek Party resigned due to lack of support for the Kurdish language from within the party. Indeed, it was not long ago that Davutoglu played a leading role in executing Erdogan’s plan to escalate tensions with the Kurds, propagating anti-Kurdish propaganda and presiding, as prime minister, over a campaign of war and indiscriminate destruction Kurdish cities and historical sites. Since forming his own party, Davutoglu has attempted to win over AKP voters by attacking Erdogan’s performance and revealing the corruption of the Turkish government. Meanwhile, another prominent former AKP official, Ali Babacan, who previously held top positions dealing with foreign affairs and the economy, formed another party in March 2020 named the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA). Babacan addressed the Kurds in their largest city in Turkey, Amed (Diyarbakir), and promised to end the government’s crackdown on the region. However, the Kurds have little reason to trust the words of officials who stood by during the most severe campaigns of oppression executed by the AKP. His approach could be welcome, though, using past history as a guide, in the absence of concrete actions and against the backdrop of ongoing war and persecution, it is difficult to place much stock in these words.
The AKP’s coalition partner, the MHP, has also recently splintered, with those who prefer not to play an unquestioning supporting role to the AKP coming together as the Iyi (Good) Party, which now holds 36 seats in Turkey’s parliament. Nonetheless, despite its disgreements with Erdogan and what remains of the MHP, the Iyi Party shares the MHP’s animosity toward the Kurds and have no desire to meaningfully address the Kurdish question. Indeed, the Iyi Party has taken great pains to avoid being associated with the HDP or the Kurds. For example, when former HDP MP Sirri Sureyya Onder, a leftist of Turkmen origin, said that the Good Party consulted with the HDP, Iyi Party leader Meral Aksener reacted harshly, denying any talks with the HDP, stating, “We didn’t have any direct or indirect contact with the HDP.”
The CHP remains the most significant opposition force in Turkey, traditionally winning votes from a broad coalition of voters on the right wing of the political spectrum as well as those placed in the center-left, secular voters of various affiliations, and some Turkish and Kurdish Alevis. Despite occasionally engaging with the HDP recently, mostly on having a common goal of weakening Erdogan, the CHP also has yet to take concrete steps to address the Kurdish issue. In June 2019, CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu was elected mayor of Istanbul after the HDP refrained from entering a candidate in this election and the HDP’s popular former co-chair, Selahattin Demirtas, spoke in support of Imamoglu from prison. The votes of millions of Kurds in Istanbul were decisive in delivering victory to Imamoglu who, nonetheless, later supported Turkish military aggression against Kurdish regions of Syria. It bears mention that another problem facing the CHP is that some of its lawmakers and members who expressed support for a resolution of the Kurdish issue are either exiled by the AKP or are no longer with the party.
Across the political spectrum, all of Turkey’s opposition parties other than the HDP, large and small, old and young, make efforts to win Kurdish votes but refrain from seriously addressing the Kurdish question. This approach will deepen the crises facing not only the Kurds but all other citizens of Turkey as well. A productive approach would be to address the Kurdish issue by educating the country’s population on the reality of the Kurdish question and how has affected citizens from all walks of life, and acknowledge how it has been used as a tool by successive Turkish regimes to manipulate the country’s citizens. Against great odds and an ongoing, intensifying campaign of systematic persecution, the HDP is proving that will remain part of Turkey’s political scene and continue to speak out for the rights of the Kurdish people and other oppressed groups in the country. The country’s other opposition parties should realize that selective acknowledgement of topics relating to the Kurds is not enough to address one of the country’s major issues, and is inconsistent with standing against the authoritarianism of Erdogan and the AKP. If there is no cooperation with the HDP for true democratization, Erdogan will continue to split the opposition and will remain in power. In Turkey’s 2018 general elections, the Turkish opposition coalition excluded the HDP, and the AKP, which pressed ahead with what was roundly considered to be an unfair election during a state of emergency, was victorious, winning 344 of 600 total seats in parliament. Since 2018, Erdogan has continued to centralize power and rule with an iron fist, with his AKP supported by the ultra-nationalist MHP despite rising discontent among the country’s citizens. As Erdogan jails opponents at home and engages in military adventurism abroad, Turkey is weathering another serious economic crisis compounded by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. If the Turkish opposition forces intend to make a sincere effort to save the country from collapse, they must form a strong alliance to represent those persecuted and alienated by Erdogan, and this cannot be done without the support and participation of the HDP and the Kurds.