A few months ago, the streets of Diyarbakir, in Turkey’s
predominantly Kurdish south-east, were alive with celebration. The
leftist, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) had succeeded in
entering parliament for the first time,
granting Turkey’s 20 million-strong Kurdish minority unprecedented
political representation. Now, though, only a few days before the
country’s second parliamentary election this year, the streets are quiet
and only a few posters advertising rival parties indicate upcoming
polls.
“There is no excitement, no joy in the runup to these elections,” says Ziya Pir, Diyarbakir MP for the HDP and candidate in Sunday’s vote. “Before 7 June, it was incredible, everyone was working day and night. Now there is war, more than 100 civilians died, how could we feel any joy, or any excitement?”
It is unclear if the apparent lack of enthusiasm will have an impact on Sunday, but most opinion polls indicate the results are likely to mirror those of national elections in June, when the Justice and Development party (AKP) of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan failed to win a parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002. That election result was inconclusive, and now Turks must go the ballot box again. But the mood among many HDP supporters is palpably different.
In September, angry mobs attacked Kurdish shops and HDP party offices all over the country, but these acts of violence have gone unpunished by Turkish courts. Many HDP politicians and activists have been arrested in the runup to the election, and leaflets promoting the party programme that includes greater regional autonomy for Kurds were banned by authorities in many places. After twin suicide bombs in the Turkish capital, Ankara – the worst terrorist attack in the country’s recent history – killed more than 100 people, many of them leftist activists, earlier this month, the party decided to cancel all election rallies.
“After so many deaths it would be inappropriate to run a joyful, active campaign,” Pir says. “But we also see that the government does not guarantee the safety of our party and of those who support us.”
“I have not had a permanent address for two months,” he adds. “I cannot go anywhere without bodyguards anymore, and we now have to travel everywhere in armoured vehicles.” Does the risk ever tempt him to give up? “Never,” he says. “After all, people voted for me with certain expectations, and there is a lot of work ahead of us. I am simply too busy to be afraid.”
The AKP’s failure to secure a parliamentary majority in June was at least partly due to the HDP’s ability to surmount Turkey’s unusually high election threshold of 10%, thanks to its appeal not only among the country’s roughly 20% Kurdish population but also with centre-left and secular voters disillusioned with Erdoğan. In Diyarbakir, the AKP only managed to walk away with one out of 11 parliamentary seats, down from six in nationwide polls in 2011. Many in the city believe the latest government crackdowns are a punishment to Kurds for having voted the wrong way.
Since June, the government has restarted its war with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), abandoning embryonic peace talks that had been under way since 2012 to try to end a bloody conflict that has killed approximately 40,000 people since it began in 1984. Over the summer hundreds were killed on both sides, but civilians suffered the brunt of the violence as the clashes increasingly moved from the mountains into the cities of the southeast.
In the central Sur district in Diyarbakir, glaziers dispatched by the HDP municipal council are busy fitting windows, their apprentices flitting through the streets carrying squares of glass marked with the names of their new owners. Many buildings, including a 16th-century mosque, are riddled with bullet holes and traces of missiles.
“The state destroys it, and the municipality is left to pick up the bill,” says a 24-year-old barber, Osman Kiliçci, bitterly. His father’s sweet shop was smashed up during the latest security operation. Bullet holes pepper the ice cream machine, the freezer and the metal shutters; the shop windows are gone. “The police came into our building and threw everyone out in order to set up snipers on the roof,” Kiliçci recalls. “Even after no [Kurdish militants] were left, they kept shooting like madmen.”
Local Kurdish activists declared administrative autonomy for the old city district in August, one of several similar attempts at self-rule in other cities with a large Kurdish population. The government, unnerved by the threat of Kurdish autonomy similar to that which exists on its borders in Syria and Iraq, responded with a violent crackdown. Consecutive blanket curfews were imposed on the neighbourhood, during which hundreds of police clashed with armed militants of the YDG-H, the PKK’s urban wing, who dug trenches and set up checkpoints all over Sur.
Several people were killed, including a 12-year-old girl who, eyewitnesses say, was shot in the head by snipers on her way to the bakery to buy bread. Many more were wounded.
“So much hate only because we are Kurds!” recounts Tugba, 25, whose husband was arrested during the raid in October. She says her son, aged six, had to watch as masked policemen beat his father with their rifle butts. “I still cannot believe it. There was a condolence tent set up in our street, but the police came in saying that it was a PKK camp. What nonsense! They came and smashed up everything. They emptied my house and burnt all my things in the street. They even took my pickle jars and poured out each one. They went up on the roof to kill 90 of our pigeons. They wrung their necks one by one,” she says.
Most of Tugba’s neighbours have since left, and many small business owners say that they, too, will have to shut up shop after the elections. “They have killed the neighbourhood,” says Mehmet Gezgin, 40, a small businessman whose family has lived in Sur for more than 60 years. “Shops cannot make any money because their customers have fled. Everyone is terrified.” Pointing at the damaged houses around him, he adds: “In June, we voted for peace, but this is what we got instead. We have never seen such violence before.”
Only a few metres from his home, he says, policemen have scrawled threatening graffiti on a house wall. “You will see the strength of the Turk,” says one, signed by “the team of the lions of God”, reminding locals of the killings and kidnappings of Kurdish dissidents by secretive paramilitary agents during the 90s. So far no investigations have been launched. “Does this not show that the government does not see us as equal citizens of Turkey?” Gezgin asks angrily. “But one thing is clear: the AKP is finished in Diyarbakir.”
Some of his customers say they will abstain from voting on Sunday, arguing that they have lost all hope for a peaceful solution of the conflict. Others claim the HDP’s June success only attracted the government’s ire and has produced little to show for it in return.
The lack of enthusiasm for the ruling party also makes it itself felt at an election rally held by Turkey’s acting prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, on the same square where five people were killed and many more wounded during a bomb attack on an HDP rally, days before the June vote. “Aren’t they tired of making fools out of themselves,” one shop owner close to the meeting square grumbles, commenting on the lack of participation. “When Selahattin [Demirtaş] came, there were 10 times as many. At least!”
But not everyone shares his disdain. Filiz, 40, and her two daughters Fatma, 22, and Kübra, 16, are excited to see the acting prime minister on stage in their home town.
“We love him,” exclaims Kübra, a high school student who wears a baseball hat emblazoned with the lightbulb logo of the ruling party. “But we adore Recep Tayyip Erdoğan even more. If anyone can bring peace and prosperity to us, it is him and the AKP.” All three women say that they feel under pressure in Diyarbakir, and Filiz says that she tells others that she will cast her ballot for the HDP out of fear.
Nuri Özdemir, a 62-year-old farmer from a nearby village who will vote for the AKP, rebuffs the claims of abuse and excessive violence by security forces in the central Sur district. “Those gangs are to blame for the violence,” he says. “They terrorise people. If peace comes, it will come with the help of president Erdoğan.”
Reha Ruhavioğlu, member of the board for the human rights organisation Mazlumder, says he cannot afford to lose hope. “The most important thing is that the violence stops, that both sides realise the current situation is unsustainable. If Turkey is not to descend into war, all parties need to sit down at the table and talk again.”
“There is no excitement, no joy in the runup to these elections,” says Ziya Pir, Diyarbakir MP for the HDP and candidate in Sunday’s vote. “Before 7 June, it was incredible, everyone was working day and night. Now there is war, more than 100 civilians died, how could we feel any joy, or any excitement?”
It is unclear if the apparent lack of enthusiasm will have an impact on Sunday, but most opinion polls indicate the results are likely to mirror those of national elections in June, when the Justice and Development party (AKP) of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan failed to win a parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002. That election result was inconclusive, and now Turks must go the ballot box again. But the mood among many HDP supporters is palpably different.
In September, angry mobs attacked Kurdish shops and HDP party offices all over the country, but these acts of violence have gone unpunished by Turkish courts. Many HDP politicians and activists have been arrested in the runup to the election, and leaflets promoting the party programme that includes greater regional autonomy for Kurds were banned by authorities in many places. After twin suicide bombs in the Turkish capital, Ankara – the worst terrorist attack in the country’s recent history – killed more than 100 people, many of them leftist activists, earlier this month, the party decided to cancel all election rallies.
“After so many deaths it would be inappropriate to run a joyful, active campaign,” Pir says. “But we also see that the government does not guarantee the safety of our party and of those who support us.”
“I have not had a permanent address for two months,” he adds. “I cannot go anywhere without bodyguards anymore, and we now have to travel everywhere in armoured vehicles.” Does the risk ever tempt him to give up? “Never,” he says. “After all, people voted for me with certain expectations, and there is a lot of work ahead of us. I am simply too busy to be afraid.”
The AKP’s failure to secure a parliamentary majority in June was at least partly due to the HDP’s ability to surmount Turkey’s unusually high election threshold of 10%, thanks to its appeal not only among the country’s roughly 20% Kurdish population but also with centre-left and secular voters disillusioned with Erdoğan. In Diyarbakir, the AKP only managed to walk away with one out of 11 parliamentary seats, down from six in nationwide polls in 2011. Many in the city believe the latest government crackdowns are a punishment to Kurds for having voted the wrong way.
Since June, the government has restarted its war with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), abandoning embryonic peace talks that had been under way since 2012 to try to end a bloody conflict that has killed approximately 40,000 people since it began in 1984. Over the summer hundreds were killed on both sides, but civilians suffered the brunt of the violence as the clashes increasingly moved from the mountains into the cities of the southeast.
In the central Sur district in Diyarbakir, glaziers dispatched by the HDP municipal council are busy fitting windows, their apprentices flitting through the streets carrying squares of glass marked with the names of their new owners. Many buildings, including a 16th-century mosque, are riddled with bullet holes and traces of missiles.
“The state destroys it, and the municipality is left to pick up the bill,” says a 24-year-old barber, Osman Kiliçci, bitterly. His father’s sweet shop was smashed up during the latest security operation. Bullet holes pepper the ice cream machine, the freezer and the metal shutters; the shop windows are gone. “The police came into our building and threw everyone out in order to set up snipers on the roof,” Kiliçci recalls. “Even after no [Kurdish militants] were left, they kept shooting like madmen.”
Local Kurdish activists declared administrative autonomy for the old city district in August, one of several similar attempts at self-rule in other cities with a large Kurdish population. The government, unnerved by the threat of Kurdish autonomy similar to that which exists on its borders in Syria and Iraq, responded with a violent crackdown. Consecutive blanket curfews were imposed on the neighbourhood, during which hundreds of police clashed with armed militants of the YDG-H, the PKK’s urban wing, who dug trenches and set up checkpoints all over Sur.
Several people were killed, including a 12-year-old girl who, eyewitnesses say, was shot in the head by snipers on her way to the bakery to buy bread. Many more were wounded.
“So much hate only because we are Kurds!” recounts Tugba, 25, whose husband was arrested during the raid in October. She says her son, aged six, had to watch as masked policemen beat his father with their rifle butts. “I still cannot believe it. There was a condolence tent set up in our street, but the police came in saying that it was a PKK camp. What nonsense! They came and smashed up everything. They emptied my house and burnt all my things in the street. They even took my pickle jars and poured out each one. They went up on the roof to kill 90 of our pigeons. They wrung their necks one by one,” she says.
Most of Tugba’s neighbours have since left, and many small business owners say that they, too, will have to shut up shop after the elections. “They have killed the neighbourhood,” says Mehmet Gezgin, 40, a small businessman whose family has lived in Sur for more than 60 years. “Shops cannot make any money because their customers have fled. Everyone is terrified.” Pointing at the damaged houses around him, he adds: “In June, we voted for peace, but this is what we got instead. We have never seen such violence before.”
Only a few metres from his home, he says, policemen have scrawled threatening graffiti on a house wall. “You will see the strength of the Turk,” says one, signed by “the team of the lions of God”, reminding locals of the killings and kidnappings of Kurdish dissidents by secretive paramilitary agents during the 90s. So far no investigations have been launched. “Does this not show that the government does not see us as equal citizens of Turkey?” Gezgin asks angrily. “But one thing is clear: the AKP is finished in Diyarbakir.”
Some of his customers say they will abstain from voting on Sunday, arguing that they have lost all hope for a peaceful solution of the conflict. Others claim the HDP’s June success only attracted the government’s ire and has produced little to show for it in return.
The lack of enthusiasm for the ruling party also makes it itself felt at an election rally held by Turkey’s acting prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, on the same square where five people were killed and many more wounded during a bomb attack on an HDP rally, days before the June vote. “Aren’t they tired of making fools out of themselves,” one shop owner close to the meeting square grumbles, commenting on the lack of participation. “When Selahattin [Demirtaş] came, there were 10 times as many. At least!”
But not everyone shares his disdain. Filiz, 40, and her two daughters Fatma, 22, and Kübra, 16, are excited to see the acting prime minister on stage in their home town.
“We love him,” exclaims Kübra, a high school student who wears a baseball hat emblazoned with the lightbulb logo of the ruling party. “But we adore Recep Tayyip Erdoğan even more. If anyone can bring peace and prosperity to us, it is him and the AKP.” All three women say that they feel under pressure in Diyarbakir, and Filiz says that she tells others that she will cast her ballot for the HDP out of fear.
Nuri Özdemir, a 62-year-old farmer from a nearby village who will vote for the AKP, rebuffs the claims of abuse and excessive violence by security forces in the central Sur district. “Those gangs are to blame for the violence,” he says. “They terrorise people. If peace comes, it will come with the help of president Erdoğan.”
Reha Ruhavioğlu, member of the board for the human rights organisation Mazlumder, says he cannot afford to lose hope. “The most important thing is that the violence stops, that both sides realise the current situation is unsustainable. If Turkey is not to descend into war, all parties need to sit down at the table and talk again.”
