As Turkey’s political parties race with time to present their parliamentary candidate lists to the country’s Supreme Election Board by Sunday evening, a leaked list of candidates of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) reveals that representatives of different minority groups will stand in the 14 May elections.
Celal Rifat, the president of an Alevi foundation, Azad Barış Ahmet from Turkey’s Yazidi community, George Aslan representing the Assyrian community in the eastern province of Mardin, and Metin Kılıç from the Circassian community will all be nominated by the HDP, Mezopotamya News Agency (MA) reported.
Veteran journalists Hasan Cemal and Cengiz Çandar, known for their efforts to ensure a peaceful solution to Turkey’s decades-long Kurdish question, were also found places in the HDP’s list of parliamentary candidates.
Former HDP MP Sırrı Süreyya Önder, who was heavily involved in a negotiation process between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that later collapsed, and was subsequently imprisoned, is likely to return to the Turkish parliament in the coming term.
Öztürk Türkdoğan, co-chair of Turkey’s Human Rights Association, and Mehmet Emin Aktar, former head of the Diyarbakır (Amed) Bar Association will also compete in the 14 May elections as HDP candidates.
Additionally, the HDP list includes Nevroz Uysal, a lawyer from the Asrın Law Firm which acts for the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, and Ayşegül Doğan, a journalist and the daughter of the late Kurdish MP Orhan Doğan, MA reports.
HDP co-chair Pervin Buldan will run in the eastern province of Van (Wan), while the other co-chair, Mithat Sancar, is nominated in the southeastern province of Urfa (Riha), which in recent months witnessed both deadly earthquakes and floods.