Rosettes at HDP's massive election rally in Istanbul. Demotix\/ Sahan Nuhoglu. All rights reserved.In Turkey, most
\nelections are more than mere elections. The latest June 7 parliamentary
\nelections were like this again. It turned out to be a referendum on President
\nRecep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s desire to switch the country\u2019s parliamentary system into
\na presidential one. <\/i><\/p>\n
The election
\nresults struck a major blow to the governing AK Party and President Recep
\nTayyip Erdogan\u2019s ambitions. The AK Party received 41% of the votes and 258
\nseats in the Parliament: a steep drop from the 2011 elections where the party
\nwon 327 seats in the parliament. The main actor responsible for this drop is the
\nPeople\u2019s Democracy Party – HDP. The HDP received 13% of the votes, coming out
\nof the elections as the third biggest party (together with Nationalist Action
\nParty-MHP) and represented in the parliament with 80 seats. Long regarded as
\nthe biggest threat to Turkey\u2019s political system and territorial integrity, the Kurds
\nhave emerged as not only the champion of Turkish democracy but also the protector
\nof the country\u2019s parliamentary regime.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
It is commonly
\nassumed that elections provide Turkey\u2019s polarized political environment with
\nsome relief. The four political parties that made it to the parliament mirror well
\nthe diversity of Turkish society, improving the Parliament\u2019s demographic
\nrepresentation. But the result has hardly settled the dust over Turkish
\npolitics in the short term. Turkey is susceptible to more instability and
\nuncertainties in the coming years. Each coalition scenario has its own
\nchallenges: none seem sustainable in the face of the country\u2019s imminent
\neconomic problems. However, predictions over coalition prospects in the short
\nrun are beyond the scope of this article. Rather, I want to look at the
\nquestion of the behavior of the Kurdish votes, their evolution in recent years,
\nand implications for Turkish politics. <\/p>\n
The June 7
\nelections were a victory for the HDP, the party increasing its votes across the
\nwhole of Turkey and seizing more votes from Turkish leftists, liberals and
\nseculars. In Istanbul, for instance, the party has increased its votes from 9
\npercent in the presidential elections in 2014 to 12 percent in these parliamentary
\nelections. How much of this vote came from Turks is hard to estimate. However,
\nsome preliminary analyses show that the party was able to win around 2 percent
\nof the votes from the Republican People\u2019s Party-CHP.\u00a0 If the numbers are correct, it shows that the
\nparty\u2019s recent opening up to wider segments of society resonated well with the
\nelectorate. Having said that, the increase is most remarkable in east and southeastern
\nTurkey, regions heavily populated by Kurds. <\/p>\n
Cuma Cicek divides
\nthe Kurdish region into three sub-regions. In the first sub-region, where HDP
\nis the dominant power, the city of Diyarbakir is a cultural and political
\ncentre in the Kurdish landscape, and the HDP\u2019s votes increased from 64 percent
\nin the presidential elections in 2014 to 79% in the parliamentary elections in
\n2015. Numbers suggest the party seems to have established itself as the only
\npolitical actor with no tangible competitor in the near future. <\/p>\n
In Cicek\u2019s
\nsecond sub region, in the city of Agri, the party\u2019s votes increased from 46% in
\nthe local elections in 2014 to 61% in presidential elections in 2014, and up to
\n78% in the latest parliamentary cycle. In Tunceli, votes increased from 33
\npercent in the local elections to 52 percent and to 61 percent in presidential
\nand parliamentary elections respectively. It appears that HDP has connected
\nsome provinces in this second sub-region to the first one, widening the
\ngeography where it enjoys hegemonic power status.<\/p>\n
The third sub
\nregion, in Cicek\u2019s category, includes the provinces (such as Urfa, Bingol and
\nKars) where the Kurdish party has traditionally stood in opposition to the other
\nmajor power bloc in the region-AK Party. Here as well the trend is changing in
\nHDP\u2019s favour. In Bingol, (one of the most conservative cities in the Kurdish
\nregion) for example, the Kurdish party raised its votes from 22 percent in the local
\nelections to 31 percent in the presidential elections and to 41 percent in the
\nmost recent parliamentary elections.This amounts to an almost 50 percent
\nincrease in votes. The other provinces are also experiencing a similar trend. Just
\nlike the first sub-region has grown to include parts of the second sub-region, the
\nsecond sub-region has also expanded into parts of the third sub-region. <\/p>\n
These results
\nhave been alarming for the AK Party. One of the most unique features of the AK
\nParty has been that the party represented the diversity of Turkish society. AK
\nParty leaders always took pride in their presence across the whole of Turkey as
\nopposed to other opposition parties whose presence has been confined to certain
\ngeographies. However, whether it is still the case is open to question now. The
\nAK Party\u2019s harsh campaign against the HDP, accusing party members of being
\nanti-Muslim infidels, did not resonate well with the Kurdish public. On the
\ncontrary, it produced the opposite outcome: the AK Party\u2019s presence in the region
\nsuffered considerably. This is in part due to President Erdogan\u2019s shift to a nationalist
\ndiscourse over the course of the election campaign. His statements that there
\nis no Kurdish problem in Turkey played out negatively with the Kurdish
\npopulation. Kurds increasingly have become frustrated with the AK Party\u2019s
\nshifting stance on the Kurdish issue. Until now, three reconciliation processes
\nhave been kicked off, but none of them has yielded any concrete outcome so far.
\nAlso, recent developments in Syria and Iraq have all fed into the feeling of
\nunity among Kurds, encouraging them to unify around the HDP. <\/p>\n
There is some
\ntruth to these explanations. But they do not provide a full account of why the HDP
\nwas able to seize the votes of Kurds in cities where it had very little or no
\nappeal before. I believe that HDP\u2019s success in attracting the votes of Kurds,
\nwho would traditionally vote for the Turkish central right and conservative
\nparties also has to do with HDP\u2019s evolution into a national party. This
\nreasoning is often asserted as the major factor behind the party\u2019s success in increasing
\nTurkish votes. However, what is often neglected is that the party also owes its
\npopularity among Kurds to its recent opening up to the broader interests of the
\ncountry as a whole. If the HDP had continued to be a regional party locked into
\nethnic and regional issues, it is not certain that these votes would have come
\ntheir way.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The election
\nanalysis of the individual Kurdish cities well displays the expansion of the
\nKurdish movement in the region. The most important aspect to note about this
\ngrowth is that this has become a trend over the course of recent election
\ncycles. Kurdish parties, formerly BDP and now HDP, have been increasing their
\nvotes since the 2009 local elections, and this increase has become more notable
\nunder the leadership of Selahattin Demirtas. There is no doubt that the HDP
\nwill assume a more prominent space in Turkish politics in the years to come.<\/p>\n
Just as the AK
\nparty triggered the emergence of a new collective identity and transformed
\nTurkey\u2019s political landscape under the lead of an Islamist identity, with the
\nsupport of liberals, democrats, Kurdish groups in its early years, so the Kurdish
\nparty is set to bring together various ethnic, religious and socio-political
\ngroups, though with different weighting, under a coalition with the aim of
\nexpanding and strengthening democratic rights and freedoms. <\/p>\n
However, what is
\ndifferent from those other major identities in Turkey\u2019s political spectrum, is
\nthat this collective identity is built on respect for diversity and difference.
\nThis will not only help reduce polarization in the country, but it will also lead
\nthe way to the achievement of societal peace. If the HDP succeeds in doing this,
\nit will continue to be one of the most important opposition forces in the
\ncountry , with the potential to grow into a partner of government in the coming
\nyears.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s desire to switch the country\u2019s parliamentary system into a presidential one….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}