Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has joined forces with “the darkest and most dangerous alliance in our history”, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-chair Mithat Sancar said in his party’s group meeting in parliament on Tuesday.
“This government bloc tries everything to prolong its existence, legitimising all relations,” Sancar said. “Against this alliance, it is more important than ever that all forces of democracy join together and put forth a common will. Never forget this responsibility.”
AKP has been allied with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) for years, and has cooperated with other right-wing circles in the past. Most recently, the ruling party’s People’s Alliance welcomed the Free Cause Party (HÜDA-PAR), a fundamentalist Islamist party associated with the Hezbollah, and the New Welfare Party (YRP), which continues the Islamist tradition that AKP broke away from two decades ago.
“We are days away from the day this country will be rid of the AKP-MHP government that believes the people deserve a life of poverty and hardship,” Sancar said. “We are on the eve of a great change. … The countdown has started for the end of the sultanate that has left the people in the ruins of a great depression and rubble of earthquakes.”
HDP is planning to announce its program and campaign materials on Thursday.
“The manifesto we will announce is the program for a democratic solution in Turkey, and for a bright future, freedom, peace and justice our people long for,” the co-chair said. “The winds of change will blow in every corner of Turkey.”
The Green Left Party, whose lists HDP is planning to run under, received a total of 2,783 applications for the parliamentary candidates. Turkey’s parliament has 600 seats, and HDP currently holds 56 seats. Parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled for 14 May.
“Conspiracies and lawsuits to cut off the HDP continue. We know they will try every trick in the book, but we will void them all,” Sancar said. “To date, we managed to resist and find a way out of whatever they pulled. This is how we march. We are aware of the traps and tricks.”
HDP decided to run under Greens lists when the Constitutional Court refused to postpone the date for the party’s defence in a case against it to shut it down. Sancar has repeatedly spoken of HDP’s “responsibility” to its six million voters, and repeated in Wednesday’s speech that the party doesn’t have “the luxury to put to risk the historic will and power that will determine the future”.
“As they laid their traps, we marched on the path of reason, faith and determination,” Sancar said. “It is crucial that the strong, resolute and deep struggle we have put forth in the social and political spheres is reflected as strongly as possible in parliament.”
HDP’s strategic goals are to join a strong democracy together with peace, to launch a new constitutional period loyal to a rights-based social contract, and to make permanent equal citizenship, peace, freedom and justice in the country. “The concrete expression of our strategic goal is to send this government packing, and to change this order,” Sancar said.
Sancar also called for dialogue for a solution to the Kurdish issue, and repeated the party’s concept of a Democratic Republic. “We want participatory democracy, not a climate of fighting, polarisation, conflict, alienation, hate and animosity.”
