Kurdish Political representation
Kurds in Turkey are diverse in terms of political affiliation, language and cultural and religious identity. Of current political parties in Turkey that are perceived as predominantly Kurdish, the largest is the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and its affiliate the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), which competes only in local elections. The HDP is often described as “left wing”, and the HDP and DBP are widely seen as influenced to some degree by the anti-capitalist ideology of Abdullah Öcalan, the founder of the principal Kurdish armed insurgent group in Turkey, the PKK.
The HDP espouses liberal policies on equalities, and according to BBC Monitoring, describes its party programme as for “labour, equality, freedom, peace and justice”, on its official Turkish language website.
However, Kurds in Turkey hold diverse political views, and do not only support political parties said to represent Kurdish interests. Large numbers of Kurds support the ruling Justice & Development Party (AKP). The Guardian reported in December 2020 that a recent Metropoll survey found that 29% of Kurds would vote for the AKP, compared with 32% for HDP. Kurdish politicians have served in the Cabinets of AKP Governments.
Parties representing Kurdish interests have often been accused by the Turkish state of having links to and standing as proxies for armed insurgent groups such as the PKK. This has led to many of them being banned, which the Balkans Insight news site describes as “the routine fate of Kurdish parties in Turkey” and “until now, 23 Kurdish parties have been closed on various allegations, such as terrorism and ethnic separatism”.
For example, the HDP’s predecessor, the Democratic Society Party, DTP, was closed in 2009 by order of Turkey’s Constitutional Court. It ruled that the DTP had become “the focal point of activities against the indivisible unity of the state, the country and the nation”.
The HDP now also faces the threat of legal closure. In June 2021, the Constitutional Court accepted an indictment by Bekir Şahin, the chief prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals, which called for the closure of the HDP and also demands that 451 party members be banned from politics.
The Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) and violence
The Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, has fought a long war with the Turkish state for independence or autonomy of the Kurdish region of Turkey. The leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, launched the guerrilla campaign in 1984, but was captured in Kenya in 1999 and imprisoned in Turkey. Shortly afterwards he announced from prison an end to the armed campaign against the Turkish Government.
Subsequently, the PKK introduced a five-year unilateral ceasefire and took a number of steps to try to change its image, calling on the Government to involve it in the country’s political process, allow more cultural rights for Kurds and release imprisoned PKK members including Öcalan. But these demands were not met to the PKK’s satisfaction and the ceasefire ended in 2004. During the ceasefire most PKK operatives moved to the Kandil Mountains in the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq.
The PKK is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK, the European Union, and the United States.
In 2005, the Kurdish DTP, called on the PKK to restore its ceasefire, without success. In December 2009 the DTP was outlawed, leading most of its Members of Parliament to transfer to another Kurdish party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).
In 2007, Turkey carried out airstrikes against PKK bases in northern Iraq but attacks continued. The Turkish Government and the PKK continued to pursue a political settlement in the following few years but without dramatic progress. Another Kurdish group, the DTK, or Democratic Society Congress, started a campaign of civil disobedience.
After its victory at the 2011 election the ruling AKP of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, far from addressing Kurdish claims, increased his nationalist rhetoric, in line with its generally more authoritarian and conservative Islamist tone. A two-and-a-half-year ceasefire collapsed in July 2015, with the PKK resuming its insurgency. There have been no significant peace talks since then, and the conflict entered a new more violent phase, with almost 3,000 lives lost between July 2015 and July 2017.[1]
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