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Turkish Elections 2018: The Kurdish gamble
JamesInTurkey.com
By the end of May 8, the roster was complete. People in Turkey had until 8pm local time to gather the 100,000 signatures that independent candidates need to run for president in the upcoming snap election.
One woman and five men will be on the ballot on June 24. That makes it – on paper, at least – the most competitive presidential election yet.
But Turkish election campaigns have long been fought on an uneven playing field.
Successive reports by OSCE monitors have documented how Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) has repeatedly used its grip on newspapers and broadcasters and its control of state institutions to pass its message to Turkish voters at the opposition’s expense.
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This election will be the most uneven yet and that is because of the plight of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a left-wing outfit that is the most suc- cessful Kurdish political movement Turkey has ever seen.
The party confounded expectations by emerging from the last election three years ago as the third-largest in parlia-
Nearly all of HDP’s 59 members of parliament have been arrested, charged or sentenced to lengthy prison terms. By one measure, just eight of its MPs have not spent at least some time in police custody since they were elected in 2015.
One former leader, Selahattin Demirtas, was the HDP’s candidate for president in 2014 and is standing this time too. But a
“Turkish election campaigns have long been fought on an uneven playing field”
ment. Since then, however, its influence has dwindled: amid accusations of col- lusion with the PKK, a Kurdish militant group that Turkey considers a terrorist organisation, parliament waived HDP MPs’ immunity from criminal prosecu- tion and allowed the police to swoop in.
stuttering trial – on charges of glorifying terrorism, among others – has kept him behind bars for 18 months. He won’t be released to join the election campaign.
Despite the gloom, Turkey’s Kurdish pop- ulation remains a potent electoral force –