Turkish politics will never be free of Kurdish presence, says HDP chair

Feb 20 2022 

The government will not be able to purge the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) from Turkish politics, the party’s co-chair Pervin Buldan said on Sunday, as she dismissed the closure case against the group.

Previous governments have tried, but none have been successful in eliminating Kurdish representation from Turkey’s political sphere, T24 cited the HDP co-chair as saying in a party congress in southern Mersin province.

The HDP, Turkey’s third largest party in parliament, is faced with a closure case over terror links, a claim the party denies. The case against the HDP follows a years-long crackdown on the opposition party, in which thousands of its members have been tried on mainly terrorism-related charges linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group that has been at war for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey for 40 years.

“We grow larger as they attack us,” Buldan said, noting that the case filed by the Court of Cassation’s Chief Public Prosecutor was the only way the government believed it could tackle the HDP.

“Because we do not allow for them to defeat or stand before us politically. Because they have witnessed and understood that they cannot defeat us in the ballot boxes,” the HDP chairwoman added.

Several of its senior leaders have been arrested and imprisoned for years, including former leaders Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ. Since 2019, the government has also seized nearly all the local administrations the HDP controls in the predominantly Kurdish eastern region of Turkey.

“Your Kenan Evren failed, your Tansu Çiller failed and you will, too,’’ Buldan said, referring to the late Turkish president and former prime minister of Turkey. “Your dream of a HDP free politics will never become reality.”