Dicle Anter, the son of slain Kurdish journalist and writer Musa Anter, announced on Friday that he has applied as a candidate to run in Turkey’s parliamentary elections on 14 May.
Anter plans to be a candidate for Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which will compete in elections under the Green Left Party to bypass the possible risk of being shut down by the country’s Constitutional Court ahead of the elections.
The fresh politician said his application was a choice that reflected his political opinions and the political tradition and culture he followed.
“I want to work in the Turkish parliament on unsolved murders, therefore I will work for the establishment of a Truth Commission if I am elected,” said Anter, the son of Musa Anter, whose murder remains one of the darkest political crimes in Turkey’s recent history.
“Unsolved murders are the block box of Turkey. A totally different future awaits Turkey, when those murders are uncovered,” Anter said.
Anter’s father was killed in 1992 in Diyarbakır, after he was added to a list of 28 people, mostly Kurdish, threatened with death in a leaflet circulated in southeast Turkey.
His murder is among hundreds of unsolved murders in Turkey committed during the 1990s at the height of clashes between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in southeast and east Turkey.