Pro-Kurdish party to back own candidate for upcoming Turkish elections

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – The pro-Kurdish DEM (“Time”) Party Spokesperson Ayşegül Doğan on Sunday announced that the party would field their own candidate during the March 31 local elections in Turkey.

“We decided to enter the Istanbul elections with our own candidates, which has been on our party's agenda for months, as the strongest option,” Doğan said.

“We will soon share with you both our Istanbul candidates,” she added.

Most likely, the party will choose Başak Demirtaş, the wife of imprisoned Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş, to run for Istanbul.

The decision hurt the chances of the Republican People's Party (CHP) to win Istanbul, with CHP supporters arguing it would easily give Istanbul to President Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).

It also led unconfirmed speculation there was a secret backdoor deal between the AKP and DEM.

“I believe the CHP was unwilling or unable to provide a clear path and project for the democratisation of Turkey and a lasting solution to the Kurdish question. These are the primary policy/political concerns of DEM Party’s base so neglecting them would have been irresponsible,” Giran Ozcan, Executive Director at Kurdish Peace Institute, told Kurdistan24

“Looking at the current actions of the governing AKP-MHP coalition I don’t think a behind the scenes deal is possible. The AKP are hellbent on quashing any Kurdish political articulation whether inside or outside the borders of Turkey and that would need to change before any kind of deal.”

Read More: In boost to opposition, Kurdish party won't field candidate

Kayla Koontz, an independent researcher, told Kurdistan24 on Sunday that DEM’s decision to run an independent candidate probably has far less to do with a relationship with AKP than with their strained quasi-alliance with the opposition. 

"(CHP’s Istanbul Mayor Ekrem) Imamoglu hasn’t delivered for DEM in recent years and (Kemal) Kilicdaroglu’s (former CHP leader) more dramatic nationalist rhetoric in the presidential elections offered a stark reminder of the deep chasms between the pro-Kurdish movement and the other opposition parties. Whatever the case, the DEM party seems to be in a period of transition and the opposition bloc weakened significantly after the election loss,” Koontz said.

During the last national Turkish elections on May 14, the HDP endorsed CHP presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu and did not field their own candidate. However, the CHP still lost the elections to the ruling AKP.

In 2019, the HDP did not field a candidate and backed the CHP, which allowed the CHP to win municipalities of Ankara and Istanbul in 2019 local elections.

The DEM party is the successor to the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which has faced legal issues and a possible party closure.

Editing by Dastan Muwaffaq