This past weekend saw another significant development related to Turkey’s upcoming presidential election, as the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) made a major announcement regarding their participation in the upcoming contest. While stopping short of announcing a candidate just yet, HDP co-Chair Pervin Buldan announced during a speech at a party meeting in the eastern city of Kars that the party would nominate and run their own candidate in the election, separate from those chosen by the main opposition and ruling coalition. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) will be seeking reelection, while the ‘Table of Six’ electoral alliance will be fielding their own joint candidate whom they have yet to announce. Originally expected to take place in June, the AKP has recently indicated that they plan to move the election date earlier.
In her speech, Buldan was quoted saying: “We are in partnership with neither the People’s Alliance [current ruling coalition] nor the Nation Alliance [main opposition coalition]. We have our own principles and approaches. When the time comes, we can sit down and discuss the issues; when the time comes we can negotiate and participate in dialogue. But for now, the HDP’s decision is to participate in this election with our own candidate. And we will be announcing this candidate to the Turkish public as soon as possible.”
The HDP is a left-wing party that traditionally enjoys support in Turkey’s heavily Kurdish southeastern provinces. Selahattin Demirtaş, former co-chairman of the HDP, has been imprisoned since 2016 on alleged terrorism charges, along with several other former HDP rank-and-file. Despite his years-long imprisonment, Demirtaş remains an influential voice in Turkey’s political opposition, as he has continued to conduct interviews, write novels, and even run a presidential campaign from his jail cell. Demirtaş served as the HDP’s presidential candidate in 2018 while imprisoned in Edirne.
Throughout its existence, the HDP has continually been threatened with closure for alleged links to terror groups and the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). Pro-Kurdish political parties in Turkey have been repeatedly banned through the years, as new ones spring up only to be threatened with closure by Turkey’s Constitutional Court. Sectarian fighting throughout the 1990s in southeastern Anatolia between the PKK and Turkish state ended in the group’s designation as a terrorist group by Turkey and the capture of its leader Abdullah Ocalan, who remains imprisoned to this day. The past two decades have seen a series of pro-Kurdish political parties founded only to be shut down due to alleged links to the banned group. The civil rights of Kurdish-minority citizens in Turkey have long been among the country’s most sensitive and intractable domestic political issues, and remain today heavily controversial and politicized.
The HDP, too, may face a similar fate. An investigation into the party is ongoing, the result of which may lead to its closure over alleged PKK ties. Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) chairman Devlet Bahçeli, a coalition partner of President Erdoğan, has been particularly vocal in demanding the party be shut down. Although not yet officially banned, the ongoing closure case has had deleterious effects on the HDP in other ways. A major announcement from the Turkish Constitutional Court last week resulted in the temporary freezing of funding for the HDP, a significant handicap heading into election season. A HDP spokesperson has announced that the party will appeal this decision.
Potential closure aside, the HDP stands to influence the outcome of the upcoming presidential election in potentially significant ways. Following this past weekend’s announcement from the party, many Turkey observers commented that the HDP’s stand-alone participation in the contest makes it all the more likely that the voting will proceed to a second round, as the HDP’s expected 8-10% vote share will make it far more difficult for either President Erdoğan or the Table of Six coalition candidate to win 50% of the vote. While some criticized the HDP’s participation as a handicap that will split the opposition vote, others noted that the party could ask its base to vote for the opposition in the event of a run-off, a proposition that could deal a significant blow to President Erdoğan’s electoral prospects in the second round.
The emergence of the HDP in Turkey’s presidential contest also lays bare the diversity of views towards the party within the Table of Six electoral alliance. Ranging from center-left to center-right, the alliance’s constituent parties are not necessarily united in their views towards the HDP or the Kurdish issue, instead bound together by a shared desire to defeat President Erdoğan and return Turkey to its previous parliamentary system. Medyascope contributor and political scientist Dr. Berk Esen commented on what the HDP’s announcement means for the Table of Six alliance over the weekend saying:
“From the HDP’s perspective I think this announcement was completely logical. The IYI Party especially has prevented all meetings or discussion from occurring between the Table of Six and the HDP. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu [CHP Chairman] has yet to take an active stance on the topic even though his position is different from the IYI Party’s…the Table of Six parties issued no response to the constitutional court’s decision to freeze HDP funding. By choosing their own candidate, the HDP is likely forcing the election into a second round of voting. This will force the Table of Six to either negotiate with the HDP or allow the HDP to play a decisive role since they will control 10-12% of the vote. And I also expect the HDP to play a similarly decisive role in parliament, since without them neither side will reach the 50% threshold.”
Emphasizing the HDP’s role as a champion of minority rights, co-chair Buldan continued in her speech saying: “The HDP is not just the party of Kurds, but the party of Armenians, Assyrians, Alevis, Karapapakhs, and all those whose who have been marginalized, excluded, and whose rights have been crushed. For this reason, the HDP is a big tent in parliament for not just Kurds but all of these beliefs and identities. But it is important not to forget that the group in this country that has experienced the most cruelty and discrimination is the Kurds. The suffering they have experienced up until now has been obvious. The HDP has a huge number of Kurdish members. This is of course natural. But it is also our opinion that other identities within this country also be included in and represented by the HDP.”
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