A conference organised by the Middle East Institute (MEI) in Washington on Friday is proof of an alliance between Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), according to the government-affiliated Sabah newspaper.
As elections in Turkey approach, both the government and the government-affiliated media have increased efforts to link the CHP and the HDP, despite the fact that the two parties will compete under different alliances for parliamentary seats in the 2023 polls.
The MEI’s 11th Annual Turkey Conference has become the latest event seized by pro-government media as an opportunity to claim implicit cooperation between the two parties.
The conference hosted well-known experts on Turkish politics, including CHP MP Ünal Çeviköz and HDP MP Hişyar Özsoy, who spoke in a late-morning session entitled “MPs on Turkey’s make or break elections”. Kane Torun, the secretary-general of the Future Party led by a former prime minister of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoğlu, also spoke in the same session.
However, the Sabah daily presented the event as a meeting between Çeviköz and Özsoy, saying in its headline that “CHP and HDP set up joint table in US”.
“Ensuring guarantees of democracy in Turkey, the protection of freedoms, equality and human rights, and creating an environment suitable to discuss the Kurdish question,” are necessary for the HDP to support the presidential candidate of a six-party alliance led by the CHP in the 2023 polls, Özsoy said during the event.
Both the alliance between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and the CHP-led alliance known as “the table of six” need Kurdish votes to be able to declare victory in the presidential elections.
While the opposition parties seek to attract Kurdish votes to end the 20-year rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the government and its affiliated media is trying to draw away conservative Kurds from the HDP and nationalist CHP voters from their party, by portraying a close cooperation between two political parties. The intent is also criminalising the CHP, by claiming the existence of alleged ties between Turkey’s founding party and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) over contacts between the CHP and the HDP.
According to Sabah, Çeviköz’s comments on Turkey’s need for democratisation efforts and his claim that the main opposition will put Kurds’ cultural rights as well as the right to education in Kurdish on its agenda after the elections, were proofs of such links.
“It is obvious that there is a common point between the HDP and the CHP about democratising the country,” Çeviköz said in a direct quote used by Sabah to support its allegations.
The daily also reminded its readers that Özsoy recently joined a protest march in Turkey to demand an end to the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the PKK who has not been allowed to meet his family and lawyers for 21 months.
Many AKP-affiliated accounts also shared posts on Özsoy and Çeviköz speaking at the same session in the MEI’s conference, depicting it as if it is a criminal act.
The two MPs were also targeted by government-affiliated media in May when they both were quoted by a Finnish media outlet.
