Graffiti artists working on Selahattin Demirtas.Demotix/ Erhan Demirtas.All rights reserved.Turkey is going through very interesting times. Interesting, because a former pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party – HDP (both with its agenda and voter base) is evolving towards a national party that is appealing to wider segments of society beyond the Kurds.
And this small party is the key in determining the number of seats that the ruling AK Party will gain in the June 7 elections, and consequently in Turkey’s political system. On November 21, HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas signaled his party’s intention to contest the general elections as a political party for the first time and caught many by surprise. Encouraged by the recent support the party’s leader had received in the Presidential Elections in 2014 (9.7% of the votes), the pro-Kurdish HDP finally officially announced that rather than put up independent candidates, it would run in the June 2015 parliamentary elections.
HDP’s decision generated wide discussion with some praising the party’s decision while others criticized it. Supporters averred that running as independents would only earn the party a few more MPs in the National Assembly and that this would not bring about any significant change in the functioning of the Parliament. With the ruling AK Party maintaining most of its seats in the new parliament, opposition parties such as CHP (Republican People’s Party), MHP (Nationalist Action Party) and HDP would not be able to challenge the government. Critics, on the other hand, found the party’s decision too risky, especially at a time when the government had announced its plans to switch Turkey’s parliamentary system to a presidential one. As a party generally receiving around 6.5 percent of the votes, this view held that HDP’s chances of crossing the 10 percent threshold are very slim. If HDP fails to pass the threshold, it will lose its current MPs to the biggest, ruling AK Party. Critics even went so far as to claim that HDP is in a secret pact with the AKP to win them an absolute majority in the parliament in exchange for regional autonomy and the release of PKK’s imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan. People of this persuasion even believe that should the HDP pass the threshold, it would lend its support to the AKP presidential system proposal.
