HUMAN RIGHTS PARTY



Turkey’s pro-Kurdish HDP ‘open to joint presidential candidate’, says co-chair

 Jul 04 2022 

The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) is open to negotiations over the party’s principles and the idea of supporting a joint opposition candidate for the 2023 presidential elections but will also consider putting up its own candidate if its concerns are not addressed, co-chair Mithat Sancar said in the party’s annual congress on Sunday, news website Artı Gerçek reported.

Outside of the HDP, a pro-Kurdish left-wing party that forms the second largest opposition bloc in Turkey, several elements of mainstream opposition have come together in what is known as the six-party table that make up the vast majority of the remaining opposition to the country’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which will celebrate its 20th year in power in November.

The six parties that make up the Nation Alliance are expected to put up a single joint candidate to run against incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the elections next year, which will coincide with Turkey’s centennial celebrations, but the HDP has not made a definitive declaration yet.

“We may determine our candidate after consulting with our voter base, constituents of our democracy alliance, and all sections of society that we can reach. Our goal would be to make it to the second round of election in the very least,” Sancar said at the congress.

“We believe a common will should be developed to take steps towards solutions. Millions of people demand change, they say they have had enough and that they want out of this tyrannical order,” he continued.

HDP’s decision will be shaped by whether the party’s supporters and ideas are heeded or ignored, Sancar said. “We aim to show in the clearest terms that no advance can be made while ignoring us in decision making mechanisms and processes.”

In the congress HDP Deputy Group Chairman Saruhan Oluç spoke against what the party calls the İmralı Isolation, the imprisonment of Abdullah Öcalan in a secluded prison on the İmralı Island off the coast of Bursa province.

Öcalan, the founding leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), was captured in 1999 and sentenced to life in prison for treason and terrorism over his leading role in the PKK’s decades-long fight against Turkey for Kurdish rights. During Turkey’s peace talks with the PKK between 2013 and 2015, Öcalan played a leading role as the PKK still considers him their leader. After the collapse of the peace process, Öcalan was placed under a strict solitary confinement where his lawyers or family have not been allowed to visit or speak to him for several years to date.

“The Kurdish issue has cost this country a century of progress, and it remains unsolved. This insolubility is what stands between the republic and democratisation,” HDP Co-chair Pervin Buldan said.

“Öcalan had promised to solve the Kurdish issue and end the armed conflict. Responding to that with a severe isolation increased insolubility and the chaos,” Buldan continued. “The isolation must end. Another century should not go by under the same pains.”

Since peace talks ended in 2015, at least 490 civilians, 1,200 members of Turkish security forces, and 2,750 PKK militants lost their lives according to a 2019 study by the International Crisis Group. The total deaths in the forty-year conflict surpass 40,000.

“Steps towards a solution include equal citizenship, education in the mother tongue, and the healing of the damage done to democracy and the judiciary. The solution will be in parliament,” Buldan said.

Sancar added that local governments must be empowered, and politically-motivated lawsuits must be ended.

The Kurdish issue must not be instrumentalised for elections, Sancar said. “Whoever thinks to use this matter to their political ends will lose big. Whoever enters a nationalist race for votes over this matter and ignores the people’s demand for a solution will eliminate itself.”

“We insist ton dialogue, democratic negotiations, democratic politics and societal accord to solve the Kurdish issue. We believe we will prevail,” Sancar said. “We will not let insolubility take this country hostage for another century.”

HDP’s former co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, who has been behind bars over terrorism charges since November 2016, sent a message to the congress together with Selçuk Mızraklı, HDP’s imprisoned mayor of southeastern Diyarbakır province, where the pair called for a “free and democratic future”.

“To win in the second century of the republic, Turkey must ask what kind of a country people wish to live in. A political will to resolve the Kurdish issue in a democratic manner must be put forth and a path must be cleared towards a lasting peace,” Demirtaş and Mızraklı said in their message, Yeni Yaşam newspaper reported.