Turkey may push for HDP’s closure to win in elections

[Anthea]

Today's Zaman

Gov’t may push for HDP’s closure to win in possible early election

Military operations recently launched against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as well as remarks by a leading ruling party figure implying that a pro-Kurdish party often accused of being affiliated with the PKK could be closed down may well be part of a government plan to carry the acting ruling party to power in a possible early election.

After criticizing the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) for failing to condemn the recent PKK violence, Mustafa Şentop, deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), said on Sunday political parties can be closed down only for one reason in Turkey, namely being linked to a terrorist organization.

The AK party lost a significant number of voters to the HDP in the predominantly Kurdish Southeast in the June 7 election. This was a large blow to the AK Party as it failed, for the first time since coming to power in 2002, to win enough seats in Parliament to form a single-party government.

“I feel this is part of a strategy to come to power as a single party,” Seyfettin Gürsel, the director of Bahçeşehir University's Center for Economic and Social Research (BETAM), told Today's Zaman.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was accused by the opposition of trying to block efforts to forge a coalition government after the election, is also widely claimed to be seeking an early election.

Taking the military operations and the targeting of the HDP by the government as a sure sign of an early election, Gürsel added, “The AK Party could trying to close down the HDP if it feels it will not be able to push [voter support for] the HDP below the election threshold.”

The government may also be hoping that the bombing against the PKK, which started after the PKK murdered several security officials, would help the AK Party win back some of the nationalist votes that drifted to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in the latest election.

Until recently, the government has been adopting a “tolerant” attitude towards PKK activity in Turkey, which led some nationalist voters to turn their backs to the AK Party.

“I feel the operations against the PKK are aimed at winning back nationalist voters,” Gürsel said.

Should the AK Party -- which currently has 258 seats in Parliament -- obtain 18 more seats in an early election, it will be able to form a party without needing a coalition partner.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin on Sunday, the AK Party's Şentop accused HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş of failing to condemn the PKK violence despite talking about peace.

“There is only one reason for political party closures in Turkey, which is parties having relations with terrorist organizations. A party's open call to terrorism and violence and having relations with terrorist organizations is a reason for its closure,” he added.

Erdoğan and the government are perhaps anticipating that the public would prefer a single-party government that could more easily tackle security problems during a period of crisis.

If the HDP fails to pass the 10 percent election threshold and remained outside of Parliament, the AK Party would then receive a great majority of the HDP's seats, which would enable it to come to power as a single party.

Several pro-government media outlets also recently accused HDP deputy Faysal Sarıyıldız of picking up a courier heading for Suruç, a predominantly Kurdish town on the Syrian border, who was allegedly carrying weapons for the PKK.

In a statement on Sunday, Sarıyıldız denied the claim and said he would begin legal proceedings against the media outlets.

He argued President Erdoğan and the government are engaged in a defamation campaign against the HDP and have put a plan into action that will drag the country into a quagmire by fomenting chaos among the people.

According to Sedat Laçiner, a security analyst, President Erdoğan is the main reason for the rise of tension in the country because it is Erdoğan's own future that is at stake. Should the AK Party lose power, Erdoğan and some of his associates could face sweeping charges of corruption and be called to account for claims of shady dealings, such as providing weapons to radical groups in Syria.

A recent remark by a HDP co-chair revealing the party's link to a terrorist group as well as the HDP's failure to clearly criticize the recent PKK attacks in Turkey have set the stage for the government's pressure on the HDP.

While criticizing the government for having failed to prevent a deadly bombing attack in Suruç, HDP Co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ said during a meeting nearly 10 days ago, “We have the [Women's Protection Units] YPJ, the [People's Protection Units] YPG and the [Democratic Union Party] PYD behind us. And we see no harm in declaring and defending that.”

The YPJ and the YPG, respectively, are female and male Kurdish fighters who are the armed wing of the PYD in Syria. The PYD is a Syrian offshoot of the PKK.

Following the suicide bomb attack in the town of Suruç on Turkey's Syrian border last week in which 32 people lost their lives, the PKK killed several police officers and military personnel, wounding several others in a number of attacks.

The PKK attacks put a definitive end to an already stalled settlement process launched by the government in 2012 to put an end to the country's decades-old Kurdish issue.

In support of Şentop's remarks about the HDP, Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan underlined on Monday that those who are in politics need to give up any connections to terrorist organizations.

In remarks obviously targeting the pro-Kurdish party, Akdoğan said on Twitter: “Ideas of the most marginal kind can be expressed in politics [today]. To impose these through the support of a [terrorist] organization would be taking democracy hostage. The nation and the law would not allow that.”

The HDP has long been criticized for not distancing itself from the PKK.

It has been widely claimed that Erdoğan is hoping to regain, in an early election, some of the seats in Parliament that the right-wing MHP managed to receive after a narrow margin of victory in some Central and Eastern Anatolian provinces in the June election.

In these provinces, the MHP won some 20 seats that it could have lost to the AK Party if the MHP had gotten some 5,000 to 10,000 votes less depending on the province.

The HDP, which for the first time took part in an election as a party rather than through independent candidates, won 80 seats in Parliament with 13 percent of the vote.

The AK Party currently has 258 deputies but 276 seats, representing an absolute majority in the 550-seat Parliament, are required to form a government.

MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli has also joined the choir by calling on the prosecutor's office of the Supreme Court of Appeals to take legal action against the HDP, urging for the closure of the party.

In a statement released on Sunday, Bahçeli, who criticized the HDP and the government over the recent PKK terrorist attacks, said: “The Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Prosecutor's Office should immediately intervene and take action against the politicians of Kandil [the mountains in northern Iraq where the PKK is based] who praise terrorists, abstain from condemning those who shed the blood of our martyrs and fail to distance themselves from terrorism.”

Many earlier pro-Kurdish parties, the HDP's predecessors, were closed down over alleged links with the PKK, which is recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU. These parties continued to operate under other names after their closures.

The PKK holds the government responsible for failing to prevent the ISIL attack on the predominantly Kurdish town of Suruç and apparently carried out the attacks in retaliation.

Hours after ISIL shot a Turkish officer dead on the Syrian border, Turkish jets bombed for the first time the terrorist ISIL in Syria on Friday.

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[Anthea]

Speaking to reporters in Berlin on Sunday, the AK Party's Şentop accused HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş of failing to condemn the PKK violence despite talking about peace.

Not only has Demirtaş failed to speak out against the PKK violence - he has shown many times that he actively supported the PKK - his visits to Oalan - his reading out of Ocalan's letters at meetings and celebrations are all well documented

Demirtaş - has by his own actions - put Kurds at risk of losing there much needed voice in parliament

Demirtaş became far to egotistical to stop and think about what the repercussions of his actions could be