With less than two weeks to go before the Turkish general elections, the election fever in the highly politicised country couldn't be higher. Especially in the southeast, the tensions have been increasing every day since February. Traditional days of protest have turned into full blown riots and the Turkish military has stepped up in their military actions against the PKK-rebels, occasionally crossing the Iraqi border and causing the deaths of more than 40 guerillas in the last months.
At the other side of Turkey the Kurdish Question is also on the election agenda. Interestingly, the two main political parties, Erdogan's ruling AK-Party and the social-democratic CHP have changed positions on how the Kurdish Question should be solved. AKP, who in the recent years have recognized the existence of Kurds and the Kurdish problem – a bold step in Turkey – and, under pressure of the EU, initiated a 'Democratic Opening' towards the Kurds, has in the recent weeks switched to a far more nationalist discourse. Prime Minister Erdogan even announced the Kurdish Question to be over, thus making the choice to appeal to the Turkish nationalist voters instead of the Kurdish votes. One can only wonder how Erdogan will account for this with the European Union, who expect Turkey to make some big changes regarding the Kurds if they want to join their club.
CHP on the other hand, with their Kemalist background, has reached out extensively to the Kurds in the last weeks. When 12 PKK-guerillas died as a result of clashes with the army, the CHP headquarters in Diyarbakir respected the three day period of mourning and closed their election offices 'out of respect for the will of the people'. At a recent visit to Hakkari, a province at the Iraqi border under heavy influence of PKK, CHP leader Kiliçdaroglu made three promises. Firstly, he spoke out in favor of more autonomy for municipalities according to the European model, an important demand of the pro-Kurdish party BDP. He also condemned the recent political arrests and detention of more than 2000 Kurdish political and community leaders and promised an investigation into the many unsolved murders in the region.
But the question remains wether the Kurds will fall for CHP's charms. In the latest local elections, the BDP took 99 municipalities in the Kurdish regions. In some symbolic places like Diyarbakir they managed to get more than 70% of the votes. Still the BDP has a hard time meeting the many needs of their constituence. Right after their electoral victory more than 2000 party leaders and civil society activists were taken to prison under accusations of membership of the KCK, a forbidden Kurdish platformgroup containing the PKK. The 'KCK-trial', as it is known, has weakened the municipalities and the party. In the extremely centralised Turkish political system, municipalities hold very little political and financial power. Their relations with the central government, in the form of the provinces governorships, remains conflictual, to say the least.
While the AKP accuses the PKK and BDP of using innocent youth and children to protest against the security forces, fact remains that the still ongoing conflict is heavily affecting the Kurdish youth and their families. The big cities are crowded with refugees who fled their villages during the height of the armed conflict, leading to very extreme urban poverty. In the rural area's, government armed village guards terrorise the villages and landmines still pose an everyday threat. Mothertongue education still remains a far away dream. Almost three generations of Kurds now carry the scars of the war.
High party politics will most likely not succeed in resolving the everyday problems of these people. The fact that some parties chose to ignore the Kurds, others only adress them during election time and democratically elected Kurds do not get the chance to build a legitimate political movement promises for a dangerous cocktail after the twelfth of June.
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