Turkey is holding provincial elections on Sunday. There will be a tight race between Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) in Kurdish areas in the southeast of the country.
"Hopefully, March 31 will be a turning point where our Kurdish brothers will be free from all oppression and decide the future of themselves and their city with their free will," Erdogan told supporters during an election campaign in Diyarbakir on Wednesday.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), now DEM Party, won Diyarbakir in the 2019 local poll but months later the state removed the elected co-mayors of the party and replaced them with pro-government administrators, in most cases governors. This was the fate of most other municipalities the pro-Kurdish party won in the election. A large number of the elected officials were arrested and many of them remain in jail for alleged links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The AKP performed poorly again in the general elections last May.
“In the elections held last May, we could not reach the number of votes we desired in both the parliamentary and presidential elections in Diyarbakir. However, I believe that the election result did not please you,” he acknowledged, claiming that the alleged presence of 70,000 people in his rally proves his point that people are not satisfied with the 2019 election results and are seeking change.
He claimed that his rival, DEM Party, has bargained with the votes of Kurds.
"There are dirty deals made for the sake of their ambitions," he added.
A Kurdish peace process to end decades of bloody conflict started in 2013 between the Turkish government under then-prime minister Erdogan and the PKK. The talks were mediated by the HDP. The talks collapsed in 2015, followed by intense urban fighting in the country’s Kurdish areas.
No peace process
Azmi Ekinci, AKP lawmaker in Istanbul, told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman on Wednesday that Erdogan often visits Diyarbakir, not just during election campaigns.
“He has said that he would now say the same thing in Amed that he said in 2005. He has not changed his position,” the lawmaker said, referring to the initial years of Erdogan’s reign.
He blamed the PKK for ending the peace process in 2015.
“It was Qandil that caused chaos,” he said, referring to the PKK headquarters in the Kurdistan Region.
Ekinci said the PKK did not listen to the instructions of their jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.
“Qandil’s objective is not the resolution of the Kurdish issue but the implementation of the plans of several world superpowers in the Middle East,” the Kurdish parliamentarian claimed.
Tulay Hatimogullari, DEM Party co-chair, said during Kurdish New Year celebration (Newroz) in Diyarbakir on Saturday that the AKP remembers the Kurdish issue only during the election cycle.
“The Kurdish people have suffered a lot, the people of Turkey have paid a high price. AKP also only remembers the Kurdish problem from election to election,” she told hundreds of thousands of supporters.
Thousands of Kurdish lawmakers, politicians, journalists, and civilians have been jailed in Turkey in the last decade for alleged links with the PKK.
There is a long history of animosity and conflict over Kurdish issues and rights in Turkey. The state has at times gone as far as denying the very existence of Kurds. Turkey's Kurds were provided limited cultural rights when Erdogan's AKP came to power two decades ago. The party has also appointed Kurdish ministers to its cabinets. The incumbent finance and foreign ministers are among them.
Ekinci also told Rudaw that issues like the peace process do not often get discussed in local elections, but noted that his party will not enter another peace process with the PKK again.
“The AKP will not put its finger in a hole where a snake bit it before. It is not the right thing to repeat it, but regarding the Kurdish issue a number of projects have been suggested,” he said without mentioning them. “Only the AKP will resolve this issue.”
He said there are people within the DEM Party who have faith in Erdogan to resolve the Kurdish issue while some others within the same party think otherwise, linking it to the party’s alleged internal tensions.
The HDP’s jailed former co-president Selahattin Demirtas, who was the main face of the now-collapsed peace process, recently called on the DEM party and the AKP to meet and enter negotiations. He said the interlocutors of such a process are Erdogan and Oclalan.
Ahmet Turk, a veteran Kurdish politician and DEM Party candidate for Mardin, told Rudaw earlier this month that there are unofficial talks with the Turkish officials to resume the peace process but days later DEM Party spokesperson said there are no ongoing efforts to restart the process.
