Kurdish journalists convened on Tuesday 6 June via Twitter Spaces to bring together voices to analyse the results of Turkey’s May elections, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s new cabinet, the election performance of pro-Kurdish parties, and how the Turkish state’s approach to Kurds will change in the coming period.
The online panel entitled “The New Kurdish Concept of the [Turkish] State” included officials from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and Green Left Party (YSP), under whose lists the HDP fielded its candidates in the election.
Both parties have plans for a reconstruction process in the aftermath of the elections. The announcement came as response to criticism that they had lost touch with the Kurdish people, moved towards middle class politics, and lost the independent path of the Kurdish movement in excessive engagement with Turkey’s polarised political landscape.
Among topics of discussion were Erdoğan’s new cabinet, which includes four Kurds. The inclusion of Kurdish ministers leads to speculation on the possibility of a new solution process, similar to the 2.5 year long experiment between 2013 and 2015.
The Sunni extremist Free Cause Party (HÜDA-PAR) entering parliament on Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lists was another point of concern over the potential developments regarding the Kurdish issue.
The HDP has had to set aside its policy of seeking a third path to an extent, due to circumstances during the campaign period, Menekşe Kızıldere from the HDP Ecology Commission told listeners. “The platforms we could find were limited. The Third Path politics took a back seat in this tight situation, not by choice or neglect, but out of necessity,” she said.
Another issue, Kızıldere said, has been the HDP inadequately convincing its voter base on its policy of “Turkeyification”, becoming part of Turkey, a concept that pertains to leaving behind single-issue politics and moving into the mainstream. “We are under tremendous pressure,” she said. “And it has hindered efforts to educate on the matter. We failed to sufficiently explain and back the policies of Turkeyification and alliances.”
HDP supported main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s presidential bid instead of fielding its own candidate, a decision that Kızıldere believes was right. “The debate started after the elections ended,” she said. “But it is easy to speak after the fact.”
Kılıçdaroğlu leads the People’s Republican Party (CHP), which was the founding party of the republic and has Turkish nationalism among its core principles. “However, whether he received votes or not was entirely based on his identity. He is an Alevi Kurd from a poor family.”
A Kurdish man from the Alevi religious minority leading Turkey’s nationalist state system “would be like hacking the state”, Kızıldere continued. “The Kurdish people saw this, even if politicians didn’t. The people wanted this. But it couldn’t be achieved, the system couldn’t be hacked from inside.”
Kurdish journalist Amed Dicle said there was no indication of an upcoming peace process, and that the Kurdish ministers in the new cabinet were “executors of the collapse plan”, the name the Kurdish movement uses for the policies implemented after a National Security Council meeting in 2014.
Germany-based academic and political analyst Yektan Türkyılmaz said the aim of the Kurdish movement was “to transform the coloniser rather than distance itself from it”. There are no actors that have successfully implemented post-colonial theory in the country, but the Kurdish movement “challenges it, saying the colonised will be liberated by transforming the coloniser, not by moving away from it”, he added. “That is the essence of Turkeyification, and it is a very ambitious goal.”
AKP’s Kurdish ministers are “not surprising”, the academic said. “Before 2014, AKP said they were the true representatives of the Kurds. This policy extends back to the Ottoman era and distinguishes between good Kurds and bad Kurds.”
This policy was set aside after the June 2015 elections, when HDP won its highest vote of 13 percent and AKP lost its supermajority in parliament, Türkyılmaz said. From then on, the state has “rejected any Kurds, whether good or bad, to raise any demands in the name of Kurdishness”, he said.
The academic said HDP has had to “advocate for normalcy” due to circumstances. “The Kurdish liberation movement does not call for normalcy, it calls for radical transformation,” he said. “Maybe we are now turning back to this radical, class-based basis. … We need to discuss how to rebuild and move forward.”
The party should go back to the driving force of the Kurdish movement, and mobilise “the lowest sectors of society”, he added. “Not just through election campaigns but also through street-level organisational efforts.”
“Perhaps we have somehow marginalised Kurdistan,” journalist Fehim Işık said. “We couldn’t explain the concept of Turkeyification to the Kurdish community. Here, self-criticism is necessary.
Another issue has been on the use of Kurdish, according to Işık. “Many who engage in Kurdish politics cannot express themselves in their mother tongue. Even those who can, prefer Turkish. This is an important issue.”
Işık posed a self-critique regarding jailed former HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş not receiving enough support when Erdoğan’s supporters called for his execution during his first speech after elections. “We have a problem of internalisation, getting used to anything that the Turkish state does: The state can do anything, and we have become accustomed to it. Our reactions have been limited due to this normalisation and acceptance.”
