Voices of boycott in the HDP

Yesterday saw the continuation of the meetings starting the day before yesterday in the HDP to settle on the strategy for the 24 June elections. A considerable consensus has apparently formed around Selahattin Demirtaş being the HDP’s presidential candidate in the first round. However, it is said that the HDP will announce Demirtaş’s candidacy after 1 May and negotiations will continue until the last moment. As to work on parliamentary elections, this will continue until the last moment. A green light has been given to the “zero threshold alliance” that has been mooted by the CHP and has also courted favour from the other opposition parties. Despite a decision emerging from Party Assembly and Central Executive Committee meetings in support of the zero-threshold alliance, the HDP has so far been kept out of the equation in meetings the other opposition parties have held to this end.

Boycott also on the agenda

There is talk in the HDP of the possibility, if the other opposition parties combine into a zero-threshold alliance and they are excluded from this alliance, of a boycott of a potential second round of the presidential election. The word in the corridors is that, should the opposition parties be unable to come together even over the elimination of the ten per cent threshold, the pledge of “governing Turkey jointly” will be meaningless and it will be impossible for direction to be given to the base with the HDP excluded. Under such circumstances, there is talk in particular of Kurdish voters not going to the polls in the second round as a political position and the possibility of a natural boycott being experienced, and of the exclusion of the HDP strengthening the impression among voters that the opposition is no different from the ruling party.

Political parties like the Good Party, SP and DP look favourably on the zero-threshold alliance mooted by the CHP as long as the HDP is not included. The Good Party in particular is known not to want to be in a zero-threshold alliance along with the HDP.

Temelli: We will win

HDP Co-Chair Sezai Temelli, who has gone to campaign in Şanlıurfa, indicated that the candidate the HDP will choose will be Turkey’s candidate and said, “Our candidate will be the candidate of hope. They are searching for a candidate while steering clear of the HDP and it cannot happen without us. The politics you are waging by alienating us has no difference from the Palace. Come and let us all combine over Turkey’s candidate. They are asking about the second round. We will win in the first round and we will win in the second round.”

Temelli, rebuking AKP MPs by saying, “Your Kurdishness occurs to you at election time,” continued as follows: “The AKP Kurdish MPs will swan around telling the lies, ‘We will bring peace.’ They do not raise their voices when the Parliamentary Speaker says, ‘There are no Kurdish provinces.’ We will stand up for our beliefs and respect all kinds of faith. Be it pious, be it Alevi or be it of no faith. Human decency dictates that we live together. We will find strength all together and we will create this richness all together.”

Prospective candidates commission

The HDP has set up a commission for applications by prospective parliamentary candidates. It has been learnt that no fee will be levied for applications by prospective candidates forming part of the women, disabled and youth quotas. The first resignation to be a prospective HDP parliamentary candidate, in turn, was that of Mehmet Ali Oral, who has served as HDP Parliamentary Group Manager for eleven years.