Pro-Kurdish Party: “Good luck in the elections if you ignore Kurds”

Turkey’s HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) has a key role in next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections, and it will decide how to play this role by activating all its mechanisms, HDP Co-Chair Pervin Buldan said, adding that those who ignore the party’s existence will not be supported by the party. 

If the candidate designated by the opposition parties “take into account and accept HDP's criteria, principles and mission, of course, we will have a dialogue and negotiation about what we will do in the elections. But if you ignore the HDP, good luck to you," Buldan said. 

6 opposition parties of Turkey which formed the “Nation’s Alliance” avoid getting too close to Pro-Kurdish HDP lest they lose nationalist votes, while the ruling AKP-MHP bloc  straight-out accuses HDP of supporting “terrorism” due to its alleged links with PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party.)

However, top pollsters say the opposition does not stand a chance against the ruling bloc’s candidate President Tayyip Erdogan should they fail to secure Kurdish votes. 

HDP recently joined the Labor and Freedom Alliance (EOI,) founded with the support of Turkey’s left wing parties and has not yet committed to support the opposition’s Nation’s Alliance.

The centrist Republican People's Party (CHP) and the nationalist IyI Party, which lead the Nation Alliance, are currently second and fifth largest in parliament, while EOI’s HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) is third.

“HDP is the only party that has revealed the reality of living together in this country with its Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Assyrians, Alevis, Sunnis, women, young people, old people and workers. For HDP, the Labor and Freedom Alliance has a strategically important place,” Buldan said. 

Budan continued: “ There is a mentality that denies the Kurds, ignores them, throws them into prisons and oppresses them every day. They try to solve the Kurdish question in this way. (...) There are thousands of HDP members in prison. (...) Kurds are aware of this. When the time and place comes, the Kurds will definitely call out for this at the ballot box. No one should doubt that.”

Buldan concluded: "The HDP will come up with its own candidate like a thunder and will get the necessary votes.”