Voters in Turkey’s southeastern province of Urfa (Riha), will in the elections on 14 May witness a race between the current Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ and Ferit Şenyaşar, a figure nationally symbolic of efforts to seek justice.
As a result of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decision to nominate most of the current cabinet in the coming elections, Bozdağ will compete in Urfa on 14 May as the top parliamentary candidate of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Bozdağ, who is of Kurdish origin, served as MP for the conservative city of Yozgat in central Anatolia from 2002-2018. He was appointed Minister of Justice in January 2022. The minister is known to many as one of Erdoğan’s ‘yes-men’, unquestioning of the president’s orders and policies.
“The time has come to work, run and hustle for Urfa and my brothers in Urfa,” Bozdağ wrote on Twitter on Monday.
In his messages for the start of the campaign, the minister targeted Urfa’s Islamist character, calling the province “the land of the prophets”.
The AKP has always had a large voter support in the conservative Kurdish-majority province. The ruling party received 52.6% of the vote in Urfa in the parliamentary elections in 2018 , winning eight seats, while Erdoğan as presidential candidate enjoyed the support of 64.9% of voters in the province.
Meanwhile, in previous parliamentary elections, the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) received 28.9% of the vote in the province, winning four seats in the parliament. Unless another party unexpectedly increases its vote in Urfa ahead of 14 May, the AKP and the HDP will again dominate the elections in the province.
Şenyaşar, the HDP’s top candidate in Urfa in the 14 May elections, is known nationwide as one of the remaining sons of Emine Şenyaşar, who lost her husband and two sons after an attack by gunmen linked to an AKP MP ahead of 2018 elections.
Bodyguards and relatives of the AKP legislator attacked the Şenyaşar family members, injuring five, at their shop premises in the Suruç (Pirsûs) district of Urfa just before the 2018 elections. The father, Hacı Esvet Şenyaşar, and his two sons, Adil and Celal, were later murdered in hospital while receiving treatment after the initial attack.
No one was detained in relation to the incident until April 2022, the hospital’s security camera recordings have not been released, nor have the defendants been identified, according to the Şenyaşar family’s lawyer. The first hearing in the case began on 17 January this year, and the previously separate case files relating to the attack at the shop and the attack at the hospital, were combined in February.
İbrahim Yıldız, who caused the death of Adil and Celal but was not apprehended in the almost five years despite there being an arrest warrant out for him, died under surgery at a private hospital in Mersin province last month. Meanwhile, one of Emine Şenyaşar’s two remaining sons was sentenced to 37 years in prison for his part in the events in which he was acting in defence of his family.
Emine and Ferit Şenyaşar have become symbols of human rights advocacy in Turkey after they started a silent vigil outside the Urfa courthouse in March 2021, calling for justice to be served. The family continued the quest for justice, despite being seriously harrassed by police outside the courthouse, and being charged by prosecutors.
Last week, during their usual daily vigil, Ferit Şenyaşar criticised Bozdağ for ignoring his mother’s struggle and refraining from visiting her.
“The Minister of Justice uses the back door when he comes to the Urfa courthouse. The Minister of Justice knows my mother’s situation very well, but he refuses to see this mother,” Şenyaşar said, after Bozdağ visited mothers in Diyarbakır (Amed) province who hold protests outside the HDP provincial headquarters, asking the political party to return their children who have joined the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
