Majority of Turkey Kurds oppose empowering Erdogan
Only 25 percent of Kurds would vote yes if the referendum that is set to take place in April was to be held next Sunday.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - A large majority of Kurdish voters of up to 57 percent would say no in an upcoming referendum on whether to give President Recep Tayyip Erdogan executive powers, according to a recent survey released on Friday.
The study's results come as the opposition pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) assumed a leading role in the "no" campaign against transferring powers currently held by the Parliament to Erdogan.
Revelations regarding voter inclinations were based on face-to-face interviews with 1112 individuals in 16 Kurdish-majority provinces including Kars, Igdir, Adiyaman, Bingol, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir, and Van in the east and southeastern Turkey.
The Diyarbakir-based SAMER Center for Political and Societal Researches which conducted and released the survey on its website said only 25 percent of Kurds would vote yes if the referendum that is set to take place in April was to be held next Sunday.
Over 7 percent of voters were undecided, 4 percent of them would not go to the ballot box and 5 percent refused to give an answer.
Although there have been calls for a Kurdish boycott of the referendum, the HDP whose 11 lawmakers including its co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag are imprisoned launched meetings with smaller pro-Kurdish parties this week in a bid to convince them for a "no" vote.
Among those who said they voted for an HDP candidate in November 2015 general elections, the no vote was the highest with 89 percent,
Sixty-eight percent of voters were of the opinion that holding a referendum during a state of emergency, a situation going on since the failed summer 2016 military coup attempt, was wrong.
Editing by Ava Homa