Recep Tayyip Erdoğan officially won the presidential race in Turkey “with the addition of factors such as fraud, overseas votes, and the votes of those who were granted citizenship later on,” jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş said in an interview.
The main opposition leader and joint presidential candidate of a wide opposition coalition, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, “did actually win the election,” Demirtaş said. “What happened has nothing to do with elections, democracy, or the will of the people. This was an operation.”
Turkey went to the polls on “an uneven, unjust and illegitimate ground,” the former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said.
“The Justice and Development Party put to work all resources of the state towards slander and oppression,” he told news website Artı Gerçek. “The country that spent the last seven years under full authoritarianism did not have conditions for a democratic race. Thus the legitimacy will always remain a debate.”
The opposition made a mistake in acting like they were facing a “normal” government, the popular politician said. “When your opponent uses extraordinary methods to conduct an operation rather than an election, you can only succeed if you fight back with extraordinary discourse and praxis.”
Erdoğan targeted Demirtaş intensely during his campaign speeches, “because it is a way to target the resilient Kurdish people and a covert signal of anti-Kurdish sentiment”.
“He doesn’t openly say ‘Kurds’, he says ‘Selo’. His last three election campaigns were based on slandering Kurds over my person. As was expected,” he added.
However, he said, the people “responded in kind” to Erdoğan telling his supporters that Demirtaş was a terrorist responsible for the deaths of dozens of people, to which his supporters responded with calling for the death penalty for the politician.
Demirtaş has been behind bars since November 2016, over various terrorism charges that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled to be politically motivated and without evidence.
“I will be released from prison on the day the law starts to function,” he said. “There are already rulings for my release.”
In a tweet that took Turkish social media by storm on Wednesday, Demirtaş had shared an excerpt from the interview where he said he was quitting active politics. His longer comments on the matter are as follows:
“I am not resigning from the HDP, nor from any duty on my shoulders. I am simply saying I will not intervene in current political developments, and that in this framework I am leaving active politics. … The HDP headquarters and myself have a comradely relationship based on trust. We criticise each other in a friendly and comradely manner, and continue on our path together.”
HDP spokeswoman Ebru Günay on Thursday told reporters that the criticisms Demirtaş posed were “valuable” to the party. “We will be making decisions altogether,” Günay said. The party will kickstart a process of renewal on Friday, with internal discussions of the caucus, women’s chapter, and the provincial branches.
