Kurdish party enters Turkish referendum with both hands tied

Turkey’s policy against the Kurds has not changed for the past one hundred years, even though different political parties, both secular and Islamic, have assumed power in different eras. They have all continued the denial of the Kurdish question, the spokesperson for the main pro-Kurdish party told Rudaw in advance of the country’s referendum on constitutional changes that would pave the way for a presidential system.

 

The main Pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the third party in the Turkish parliament, opposes the constitutional changes that gives unprecedented powers to the president. 

 

Osman Baydemir, who became HDP’s spokesperson when his predecessor was arrested earlier this year, said that Ankara, like Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus, has been engaged in atrocities against the Kurds.

 

“Unfortunately the policies in Ankara are one hundred years old,” he said, making reference to the new Turkish state founded after the end of the First World War.

 

“They change their presidents, they change their prime ministers, but they do not change their state policy towards the Kurds.”

 

He said that the Kurdish people in Turkish Kurdistan, also called northern Kurdistan, like their fellow Kurds in the Kurdistan Region, are engaged in a long struggle to achieve their “God-given rights.”

 

He does not have the right to speak his own Kurdish language in the Turkish legislature, Baydemir said, noting that in the Kurdistan Region, the minority Turkmen and Arabic languages are officially recognized.

 

“In northern Kurdistan, my language is still banned,” he said. “To this day I cannot speak my language in the Turkish parliament, as a Kurdish member of the parliament. When I speak in Kurdish, they will write xxx in its place. They write it like a language that cannot be understood.”

 

Baydemir said that the Kurdistan Region has achieved a “success” and is an example for how the Middle East should look if it were to take a democratic path. 

 

“They should learn democracy from us. I believe that the Kurdish nation will teach democracy to Tehran, Baghdad, and the Levant [Syria],” he said, as he talked about the rights of the minorities in the Kurdistan Region.

 

Commenting on the Kurdistan Region's intensified efforts to hold an independence referendum, he said that his party is in full support as Kurds are entitled to the same rights as Arabs or Turks and should not be seen as a threat. 

 

“They see the success in southern Kurdistan, the flag of southern Kurdistan, or the Kurdistan flag, as their enemy. They perceive it as their destruction. Why? Why?”

 

“Whether the Kurds in southern Kurdistan seek a federation or the Kurds declare their independence, why should this be seen as enmity against the Turks, or the Arabs, or the Persians? You, too have your own states, why should not the Kurds have one of their own?”

 

Emphasizing that the Kurds in all four parts of Kurdistan are all “one nation,” he said Kurds will achieve their rights with the unity among the Kurds themselves. 

 

Last month, the Kurdistan flag was raised in the city of Kirkuk, referred to by Kurds as the heart of Kurdistan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Kurds will pay a heavy price if they did not lower it. Baydemir responded, saying that the four nations are against the Kurdistan flag anywhere and everywhere, not only in the Kurdistan Region.

 

“Be reassured that they would oppose the colorful flag not only in southern Kurdistan, but also on the moon, Mars, or Jupiter.”

 

“And why is that?” he asked. “Because they are against the Kurds.”

 

As Turkey goes to vote in the referendum on Sunday, HDP, a staunch opponent to the constitutional amendments, is functioning at its lowest capacity. The Turkish government, led by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has had the party’s charismatic co-chair Selahattin Demirtas and his female counterpart Figen Yuksekdag in prison for months, along with more than a dozen HDP MPs and hundreds of party officials.

 

Turkey is also one of the biggest jailers of journalists in the world, many of whom unsurprisingly are of Kurdish origin. 

 

The AKP left no stone unturned that could negatively impact the pro-Kurdish party’s performance in Sunday’s historical referendum.

 

It all began last year with lifting parliamentary immunity from a select number of MPs, a large proportion of who were from HDP, affecting more than 50 out of its 59 seats, for alleged links with “terrorist” organizations, namely the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Kurdish MPs have denied the allegations.  

 

A year before that, HDP was able to pass the hard-to-beat 10 percent threshold, a rate never meant for a pro-Kurdish party to reach. But HDP, with its leadership active and functioning like a fine-tuned machine coupled with a ceasefire between the Turkish state and the PKK, was able to work a miracle, getting about 13 percent of the votes and sending nearly 90 MPs to the parliament.

 

Even when President Erdogan called for a snap election after the resumption of the conflict with the PKK, HDP repeated the miracle, albeit with fewer votes.

 

Last June, the Turkish parliament, led by AKP and its ally the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), released the Turkish army from restrictions, if there were any left, to crush the PKK in Kurdish areas under an iron fist.

 

The parliament granted the Turkish army immunity from persecution, making it hard to try allegations of rights abuses committed in their fight against the guerrillas in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority areas south and southeast of the country. 

 

The result was that a place like Nusaybin, a Kurdish city in Turkey’s east, looked more like the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo. Much of the city’s population was displaced, fleeing the months-long urban war.

 

This is not to say that the PKK takes no blame for that. Far from it. Some PKK elements played into AKP’s hands when they decided to take the war to civilian-populated areas, giving more sway to the Turkish government's narrative that HDP-controlled municipalities helped facilitate the guerrilla war against the Turkish army.

 

The AKP, empowered with President’s Erdogan’s decrees signed under the ongoing emergency law imposed after the failed coup of last July, passed bills to strip HDP’s regional party from running nearly all the municipalities it had won in local elections – instead appointing AKP members to run these municipalities. These new mayors were able to restrict HDP’s campaigns.

 

As far as much of the Kurdish areas are concerned, their choices are straightforward. The choices are not about voting one way or the other, preferring the presidential system or the current parliamentary one. In reality, neither gives the Kurds their rights, such as the right to speak their language in the parliament. It is about a three-decade long war. 

 

Turkey’s Erdogan promises peace and stability if they vote ‘Yes,’ and the opposite is true if they vote otherwise. 

 

The constitutional reforms, which number 18 articles in total, aiming to found a presidential system in place of the current parliamentary system, are fiercely opposed by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and HDP.

 

The CHP has said that the changes amount to a regime change, a phrase that the president has strongly opposed.

 

If approved by the Turkish voters, it may pave the way for Erdogan to stay in power until 2029 as he would have the right to stand in the presidential elections for two more five-year terms under the new constitution.

 

The proposed constitution also allows for the president to maintain ties to a political party. President Erdogan was obliged to officially give up leading the ruling AKP when he became president in 2014, in line with the current constitution.