Rosettes at HDP's massive election rally in Istanbul. Demotix/ Sahan Nuhoglu. All rights reserved.In Turkey, most
elections are more than mere elections. The latest June 7 parliamentary
elections were like this again. It turned out to be a referendum on President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s desire to switch the country’s parliamentary system into
a presidential one.
The election
results struck a major blow to the governing AK Party and President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions. The AK Party received 41% of the votes and 258
seats in the Parliament: a steep drop from the 2011 elections where the party
won 327 seats in the parliament. The main actor responsible for this drop is the
People’s Democracy Party – HDP. The HDP received 13% of the votes, coming out
of the elections as the third biggest party (together with Nationalist Action
Party-MHP) and represented in the parliament with 80 seats. Long regarded as
the biggest threat to Turkey’s political system and territorial integrity, the Kurds
have emerged as not only the champion of Turkish democracy but also the protector
of the country’s parliamentary regime.
It is commonly
assumed that elections provide Turkey’s polarized political environment with
some relief. The four political parties that made it to the parliament mirror well
the diversity of Turkish society, improving the Parliament’s demographic
representation. But the result has hardly settled the dust over Turkish
politics in the short term. Turkey is susceptible to more instability and
uncertainties in the coming years. Each coalition scenario has its own
challenges: none seem sustainable in the face of the country’s imminent
economic problems. However, predictions over coalition prospects in the short
run are beyond the scope of this article. Rather, I want to look at the
question of the behavior of the Kurdish votes, their evolution in recent years,
and implications for Turkish politics.
The Kurdish votes: where do they stand?
The June 7
elections were a victory for the HDP, the party increasing its votes across the
whole of Turkey and seizing more votes from Turkish leftists, liberals and
seculars. In Istanbul, for instance, the party has increased its votes from 9
percent in the presidential elections in 2014 to 12 percent in these parliamentary
elections. How much of this vote came from Turks is hard to estimate. However,
some preliminary analyses show that the party was able to win around 2 percent
of the votes from the Republican People’s Party-CHP. If the numbers are correct, it shows that the
party’s recent opening up to wider segments of society resonated well with the
electorate. Having said that, the increase is most remarkable in east and southeastern
Turkey, regions heavily populated by Kurds.
Cuma Cicek divides
the Kurdish region into three sub-regions. In the first sub-region, where HDP
is the dominant power, the city of Diyarbakir is a cultural and political
centre in the Kurdish landscape, and the HDP’s votes increased from 64 percent
in the presidential elections in 2014 to 79% in the parliamentary elections in
2015. Numbers suggest the party seems to have established itself as the only
political actor with no tangible competitor in the near future.
In Cicek’s
second sub region, in the city of Agri, the party’s votes increased from 46% in
the local elections in 2014 to 61% in presidential elections in 2014, and up to
78% in the latest parliamentary cycle. In Tunceli, votes increased from 33
percent in the local elections to 52 percent and to 61 percent in presidential
and parliamentary elections respectively. It appears that HDP has connected
some provinces in this second sub-region to the first one, widening the
geography where it enjoys hegemonic power status.
The third sub
region, in Cicek’s category, includes the provinces (such as Urfa, Bingol and
Kars) where the Kurdish party has traditionally stood in opposition to the other
major power bloc in the region-AK Party. Here as well the trend is changing in
HDP’s favour. In Bingol, (one of the most conservative cities in the Kurdish
region) for example, the Kurdish party raised its votes from 22 percent in the local
elections to 31 percent in the presidential elections and to 41 percent in the
most recent parliamentary elections.This amounts to an almost 50 percent
increase in votes. The other provinces are also experiencing a similar trend. Just
like the first sub-region has grown to include parts of the second sub-region, the
second sub-region has also expanded into parts of the third sub-region.
These results
have been alarming for the AK Party. One of the most unique features of the AK
Party has been that the party represented the diversity of Turkish society. AK
Party leaders always took pride in their presence across the whole of Turkey as
opposed to other opposition parties whose presence has been confined to certain
geographies. However, whether it is still the case is open to question now. The
AK Party’s harsh campaign against the HDP, accusing party members of being
anti-Muslim infidels, did not resonate well with the Kurdish public. On the
contrary, it produced the opposite outcome: the AK Party’s presence in the region
suffered considerably. This is in part due to President Erdogan’s shift to a nationalist
discourse over the course of the election campaign. His statements that there
is no Kurdish problem in Turkey played out negatively with the Kurdish
population. Kurds increasingly have become frustrated with the AK Party’s
shifting stance on the Kurdish issue. Until now, three reconciliation processes
have been kicked off, but none of them has yielded any concrete outcome so far.
Also, recent developments in Syria and Iraq have all fed into the feeling of
unity among Kurds, encouraging them to unify around the HDP.
There is some
truth to these explanations. But they do not provide a full account of why the HDP
was able to seize the votes of Kurds in cities where it had very little or no
appeal before. I believe that HDP’s success in attracting the votes of Kurds,
who would traditionally vote for the Turkish central right and conservative
parties also has to do with HDP’s evolution into a national party. This
reasoning is often asserted as the major factor behind the party’s success in increasing
Turkish votes. However, what is often neglected is that the party also owes its
popularity among Kurds to its recent opening up to the broader interests of the
country as a whole. If the HDP had continued to be a regional party locked into
ethnic and regional issues, it is not certain that these votes would have come
their way.
So what next?
The election
analysis of the individual Kurdish cities well displays the expansion of the
Kurdish movement in the region. The most important aspect to note about this
growth is that this has become a trend over the course of recent election
cycles. Kurdish parties, formerly BDP and now HDP, have been increasing their
votes since the 2009 local elections, and this increase has become more notable
under the leadership of Selahattin Demirtas. There is no doubt that the HDP
will assume a more prominent space in Turkish politics in the years to come.
Just as the AK
party triggered the emergence of a new collective identity and transformed
Turkey’s political landscape under the lead of an Islamist identity, with the
support of liberals, democrats, Kurdish groups in its early years, so the Kurdish
party is set to bring together various ethnic, religious and socio-political
groups, though with different weighting, under a coalition with the aim of
expanding and strengthening democratic rights and freedoms.
However, what is
different from those other major identities in Turkey’s political spectrum, is
that this collective identity is built on respect for diversity and difference.
This will not only help reduce polarization in the country, but it will also lead
the way to the achievement of societal peace. If the HDP succeeds in doing this,
it will continue to be one of the most important opposition forces in the
country , with the potential to grow into a partner of government in the coming
years.
- For the complete analysis, see: Cuma Çiçek, 1999’dan 2014’e Kürt
Coğrafyasının Siyasi Haritası [The
Political Map of the Kurdish Region from 1999 to 2014], - 2014 Seçimleri: Kürt
Hegemonyasının Konsolidasyonu ve Yayılışı [The 2014 Elections: Consolidating
and Expanding the Kurdish Hegemony]