HDP and Kurdish parties
The HDP is often described as ‘pro-Kurdish’, or worse, as ‘the’ Kurdish party. As has been shown, the HDP has struggled to attract even half of the Kurdish electorate, achieving this feat only once. The fact that the nominally leftist HDP has overshadowed any other regional party is due to a number of factors: One is the structure of the Turkish political system. With an election threshold of 10 percent (before 2022; today it is 7 percent), among the highest in the world, splitting the Kurdish vote would likely bar it from entering parliament. For that same reason, opposition factions have at times urged their Kurdish voters to strategically cast their ballots for the HDP in parliament (and for them in the presidential elections). According to one article, since only the HDP and the AKP are competitive in the southeast, a failure of the HDP to clear the 10 percent threshold in 2018 would have led to 50 extra seats in parliament for Erdogan’s party. Another reason is the fact that conservative Kurds have usually cast their ballot for Turkish parties, as they are likelier to win an outright majority. Moreover, the HDP has been better organized, reinventing itself seven times since a Turkish court order the closure of the HEP in 1993.
However, the HDP has reached a natural limit in its courting of the Kurdish vote. Attempts to compete in election with smaller Kurdish parties under a joint list in five provinces have broken down – the parties say, because of the HDP’s intransigence. Instead, the HDP has attempted to expand its voter base to the Turkish left by highlighting its socialist discourse and putting forward a number of radical policies (for Turkish standards), such as support for LGBT rights. In recent years, the HDP has also established an unlikely alliance with the CHP, the main opposition party. Kurdish voters have been encouraged to cast their ballots for the CHP candidate in the presidential election, knowing that it would otherwise split the anti-Erdogan vote. During the latest 2019 municipal elections, Kurds in Istanbul and Ankara were told to vote for the CHP candidate, handing Turkey’s two largest cities to the opposition.
Yet the HDP is not representative of Kurds as such. The same 2019 municipal elections led to AKP wins in the Kurdish-majority provinces of Agri, Mus, Bitlis and Sirnak – all of which had comfortably been won by the HDP in the general elections of June 2015. In addition, Tunceli was won over by the Turkish Communist Party.
What does this mean for 2023?
Turkey’s 2023 presidential and general elections will be decisive. During his 20-year stint in power, Erdogan has rolled back civil liberties, undermined the country’s checks and balances, led the country to economic ruin, and embroiled its armed forces in half a dozen unwinnable international conflicts. Nearly the entire political spectrum has united to counter Erdogan’s presidential bid – all, that is, but the HDP.
Despite currently being the second-largest opposition party in parliament, the pro-Kurdish party has been left out of the six-headed National Alliance coalition. For most of the political establishment, collusion with the HDP is still toxic. In March, the leader of the far-right IYI party threw a fit over what she perceived were concessions to the Kurds. The HDP itself is facing an eighth closure by a Turkish court, and has decided to run under the Green Left party banner.
If the opposition hopes to win the elections, they will need the Kurds. Both presidential candidates are neck-and-neck in the latest polls; neither is likely to win an outright majority in the first round. Kurds have thus been declared the ‘kingmakers’ of the upcoming elections. The opposition’s presidential contender, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, himself of Kurdish origin, has struck a more conciliatory note as of late, urging Turks to accept ethnic and religious minorities, and meeting with the HDP. The HDP, in turn, has not fielded any candidates for the presidential election and told their supporters to vote for Kilicdaroglu in order to unseat Erdogan. Nothing in Kilicdaroglu’s recent rhetoric, however, suggests that he would herald a major policy change on Kurdish issues in Turkey or its neighbouring countries.
In a last desperate attempt to court Turkey’s conservative votes, Erdogan has invited HUDA PAR, Kurdish Hezbollah’s political wing, to join his coalition. This is a controversial move. Besides being Kurdish nationalists, HUDA PAR has also been shown to be funded by Iran’s Quds Force. Kurdish Hezbollah has been rumoured to spy on NATO installations in Turkey for Tehran. Erdogan and HUDA PAR reached a similar understanding in 2014, when the then-prime minister freed all convicted Hezbollah fighters in return for the Kurdish party’s support. Yet the deal was discreet and not disclosed to the public. Its courting of HUDA PAR this year was publicized and occurred over the protests of the AKP’s coalition partners. HUDA PAR holds no seats in parliament and runs a single municipality. The move is thus largely symbolic. By inviting the Kurdish-Salafist party into his coalition, Erdogan is likely signalling his ongoing support for Turkey’s conservative Kurds.
It has been shown that the Kurdish vote in Turkey is volatile and defies generalizations. As it stands, Turkey’s Kurds are less likely to lend their support to Erdogan in 2023 than in previous elections, though neither the HDP’s nor HUDA PAR’s vying for influence will have much of an effect. Turkey’s Kurds were enticed by Erdogan’s AKP in 2002 by its promise of levelling the playing field and upending the secular elite’s hold over the country. Over two decades, Erdogan did indeed restructure the country’s civil administration, armed forces, and business class, populating them with his loyalists. Yet Kurds have for the most part found no space for themselves in the new Turkish order. Anti-Kurdish racism in Turkey is alive and well. Kurds are financially worse-off than they were a decade ago. Moreover, an earthquake on February 6, which a number of Kurdish-inhabited regions, laid bare the corruption at the heart of Erdogan’s government.
What comes next is less clear. An opposition win will not make the HDP more appealing to conservative Kurds or allow for the HDP to radically broaden its voter base. After the disappointing 2019 municipal elections, one observer noted that “one of the lesser-discussed aspects of the struggle for Kurdish rights, not only in Turkey but in other Middle East countries, has been the divisions between the people and the political parties. Sometimes, the parties have pushed harder for confrontation than the people were comfortable with.” Without a resolution to this inherent contradiction, the Kurdish electorate is unlikely to unite around a single party.