Turkey’s offensive in Afrin will sway Kurdish voters to choose HDP: Turkey Experts

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Ankara’s operation into Syrian Kurdistan’s Afrin region will sway Kurdish voters to choose the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the upcoming Turkey elections, according to two Turkish studies experts.

Turkey’s June 24 snap elections, called for by current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will likely change the course of politics in the country or lead the nation toward more stringent rule under Erdogan.

Gönül Tol, the founding director of The Middle East Institute’s Center for Turkish Studies, says the current administration’s offensive against Kurds in Afrin might push the country’s Kurdish population to vote for the pro-Kurdish HDP.

Tol believes Ankara’s “Syria strategy has become the extension of its domestic fear of Kurdish separatism,” and this “is helping the HDP.”

She expects the HDP to fulfill the 10 percent threshold required in Turkey for the party to make it into Parliament despite it looking “to be challenging for them,” especially with their candidate for President, Selahattin Demirtas, campaigning behind bars.

Tol noted that another party, the Islamist Felicity Party, may attract Kurdish voters due to its “roadmap about the Kurdish question” in Turkey, acknowledging “that Turkey had a Kurdish problem and [pledging] that they would resolve the Kurdish issue.”

“I think the AKP [has] managed to alienate the Kurdish voters and that will help both the HDP and the Islamist Felicity Party in the upcoming election,” she told Kurdistan 24.

Güney Yildiz, a Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, also highlighted Ankara’s Afrin offensive as a likely reason Kurds may cast their votes for the HDP.

“I think most Kurds in Turkey, because of Turkey’s operation in Afrin, don’t want to vote for the AKP,” he said.

Yildiz explained that the Kurdish population’s decision to choose the HDP over the AKP was not necessarily due to the pro-Kurdish party’s discourse or its promises to address the Kurdish public opinion, “but because of people’s unhappiness [with] the [current] Turkish government.”

On Sunday, Demirtas appeared on national TV for the first time since his arrest 20 months ago where he called Erdogan “a low-grade bully,” and “delusional” without naming him and told voters not to choose a one-man rule.

The former HDP co-leader became the first presidential candidate in the history of world democracy to have made a speech on state TV while in detention.

(Kurdistan 24 team in Washington DC conducted the interviews)