Pro-Kurdish HDP party under pressure ahead of Turkey vote

Selahattin Demirtas shared a cup of tea at dawn on Sunday with a few workers on a Turkish building site, joined students for a simple omelette at noon and then made a speech to just a few hundred party members in a dimly-lit Istanbul conference room.

While his rivals stage colourful mass rallies, where the flags fly and the rhetoric flows, the leader of Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party has been forced into running a very low-key campaign for the weekend election.

Demirtas and his Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) are the government's latest bete noire, accused of being a political front for outlawed Kurdish rebels engaged in a new armed campaign against the Turkish state.

Five months ago, the HDP was celebrating an extraordinary election breakthrough after winning enough votes to take up seats in parliament -- a first for a pro-Kurdish group in Turkey -- and strip the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of its majority.

But the jubilation turned to grief this month when two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a peace rally in Ankara, killing 102 people, many of them HDP members, in an attack blamed on the Islamic State group.

- 'A difficult time' -
The October 10 attack, on the heels of a similar bombing against pro-Kurdish activists in July, forced the HDP to abandon plans for big campaign rallies ahead of Sunday's vote.

Instead, its low-key gatherings are held indoors, usually in conference rooms or other areas already checked out by sniffer dogs.

"This is a very difficult time for our party, we have to confront the government as well as Daesh," HDP member Ergin Emin, 67, told AFP, using another name for IS.

"I'm a Kurd and I know dictatorships," he said. "But this is the first time in my life I have not felt safe going to a meeting."

While the party is seeking to broaden its appeal beyond its natural Kurdish base in the southeast to secular Turks, women and gays, Erdogan and his allies insist it is merely an "accomplice" of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"They have the audacity to speak of peace... but that means blood," Erdogan said this week, urging Turks not to vote for the HDP.

Erdogan's "war on terrorism" makes no distinction between the Islamic State, outlawed leftist groups and Kurdish rebels who have been fighting Ankara's rule since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed 40,000 lives.
Demirtas has been put on the defensive over the collapse of the 2013 ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK, with his elder brother having joined rebel ranks at their headquarters on a mountain in northern Iraq.

- 'Brink of civil war' -

But Demirtas, a 42-year-old lawyer seen as the only politician able to rival Erdogan's charisma and rhetorical skills, insists the HDP and PKK are separate groups.

"We are definitely not a party of the PKK nor its political wing," he said earlier this year.

The two parties have been at loggerheads since the June vote, which ended 13 years of AKP dominance and scuppered Erdogan's hopes of creating a powerful US-style presidency.

And the mud has been flying thick and fast during this latest campaign.

"Traitors to the country... enemies of the state. You'll notice that they (the AKP) never talk about us as political opponents," Demirtas said at the weekend.

"They have brought Turkey to the brink of civil war, to the point where ordinary people hate each other."

Demirtas has accused the authorities of deliberately neglecting security at the Ankara event and has branded Erdogan the head of a "serial killer state".

"He should look in the mirror if he wants to see a criminal," retorted Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, a loyal Erdogan ally.

Under Demirtas and co-leader Figen Yuksekdag, the HDP portrays itself as the only real alternative to the AKP, defending  minorities and workers' rights with a socialist economic platform.

"They are besmirching him because they are jealous," said Kenan Ozturk, a 24-year-old student. "The tree that bears fruit always ends up being stoned."

"The other politicians are still living in the past. Selahattin Demirtas is close to us," added young party activist Akturk Rabia, 22.

While Demirtas hopes the HDP will breach the 100-seat barrier on Sunday, he does not expect to be able to form an alternative government -- for now.

"But we will take the next step, we will keeping growing and get closer to our goal."

Source:   AFP