Three weeks before Turkish elections, Kilicdaroglu speaks up for minorities
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – With just over three weeks left until Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main contender for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s job, is appealing to the country’s ethnic and religious minorities. It is a striking departure from Turkey’s national and nationalist politics.
In a video posted to Twitter last week, Kilicdaroglu opened up about his own Alevi roots, addressing young, first-time voters in particular. “Our identities are what makes us who we are … We cannot choose them,” the CHP party head said. “But there are very important things in life we can choose. We can choose to be a good person, to be honest, to be ethical, to be righteous, to be virtuous and fair. We can choose to lead a better life in a free and prosperous country.
Alevis are the largest religious minority in Turkey, encompassing both ethnic Turks as well as Kurds. They have been historically persecuted, particularly by the nationalist fringes, including the junior partner to Erdogan’s AK party in parliament, the MHP.
Kilicdaroglu’s frank message has generally been received favorably. Selahattin Demirtas, an imprisoned leader of the pro-Kurdish HDP party, tweeted, “I wholeheartedly support this message.”
Kilicdaroglu also made overtures to the country’s Kurds last week, addressing the so-called ‘Kurdish issue’ head on. “Millions of Kurds are currently being treated as terrorists,” he said in a different Twitter video. He called out Erdogan for stigmatizing the country’s Kurds has he falls in the polls, calling his behavior “shameful.”
The six-party coalition in opposition to Erdogan, which is headed by Kilicdaroglu, are largely dependent on Kurdish voters to get them over the finish line in the presidential elections. The HDP has not fielded any of their own candidates in a move meant to strengthen the coalition’s chances at the ballet box. Even so, polls show a narrow neck-and-neck race.
Kilicdaroglu’s courting of the Kurds is a markedly different approach to the government’s current policy. Yet the country’s minorities will not let their guard down. Erdogan clutched the top job in 2003 by making promises to conservative Kurds. Until 2014, Erdogan relaxed laws against the Kurdish language and culture, and was set to make peace with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Before that, Turkey’s Kurds had lived through decades of massacres and oppression at the hands Kilicdaroglu’s own CHP party.