Pro-Kurdish party open to negotiations with any political actors that follow its principles

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) released a roadmap for future elections in Turkey during a press conference in Ankara on Monday. The party also announced that it is ready to talk to any social parties and political actors which follow its principles.

“We emphasize that we as HDP stand ready to talk to and negotiate with all social parties and political actors who are in favor of implementing principles cited above, to walk together with them and we remain ready for joint struggle and administration,” the co-Chairs Pervin Buldan and Mithat Sancar said in a joint declaration. The declaration is part of their campaign called "we are the HDP, we are everywhere."

The HDP also said that the upcoming period and elections are “viewed by our people as one of the most important turning points for the establishment of a democratic republic.”

Moreover, the HDP said “that we do not seek to find a place in any other alliance [than the HDP’s Democracy Alliance] for the parliamentary elections.”

“We want to change the Executive Presidential System together with the structures that feed it, which we believe seeks to make arbitrariness and tyranny institutionalized and permanent and is thus the primary reason behind the multiple crises and the deadlock we face,” it added.

The next national elections in Turkey are expected to be held by 2023. However, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) might hold elections in 2022 amidst a worsening economic crisis, weakened national currency, and intra-party tensions.

As a result, Turkey’s opposition parties, including the HDP, are increasingly preparing for the upcoming elections, with renewed discussions on the Kurdish issue and election campaigns.

Read More: Kurdish leader Demirtaş: Kurdish issue should be solved through Turkish parliament

A debate was recently sparked by Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who suggested in a documentary that Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan is not a legitimate interlocutor to solve the Kurdish issue.

However, he said the HDP is a legitimate actor that has popular support.

On September 23, Turkish president Erdogan said the Kurdish issue was already resolved, angering Kurdish voters.

During the March 2019 municipal elections in Turkey, the HDP in a gesture to the CHP, did not field candidates in western Turkish cities with sizable Kurdish populations, namely Istanbul, where the party has over one million votes, the capital Ankara, Izmir, Adana, Mersin, and Antalya.

As a result, this helped the CHP to win in most of them as part of an uneasy de facto alliance—given the latter’s history with the Kurds.