ANKARA, Turkey—The pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) officially started its election campaign in Ankara on Friday, with its co-leader announcing the party’s opposition to Turkey presidential governing system favored by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The HDP, widely supported by Kurdish and various leftist groups in Turkey, received 13 percent of the vote in June’s general election, becoming the first pro-Kurdish party to win the right to a seat in parliament.
New polls were announced after the AKP was unable to form a coalition government in 45 days. The AKP received 41 percent of the votes, an eight percent drop since the 2011 polls when it won 327 of the 550 parliament seats.
HDP co-leader Selahettin Demirtas said his party hopes this time for 110 seats in parliament, or 17 percent of the total votes.
“Turkey will not survive without HDP, and HDP won’t survive without Turkey,” Demirtas said in his election speech before thousands of supporters in Ankara on Friday.
The young HDP leader also said the release of Abdulla Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), is one of the main election goals for his party. Ocalan has been serving a life sentence in a Turkish prison since 1999 “for treason and anti-establishment activities.”
Turkey’s AKP-led government and Ocalan struck a deal in 2013 which ended decades of hostilities between the PKK and Turkish army and effectively ended the fighting.
Clashes resumed this year, however, following a July 20 bombing in the Turkish-Syrian border town of Suruc in which 32 activists were killed and 104 wounded. The PKK later took responsibility for killing two policemen, and Turkey responded with near-daily air raids and artillery attacks.
In his speech, Demirtas issued a long list issues he said the HDP would work for when entering parliament, including shutting down prisons for children, abolishing the ministry of religious affairs, revising anti-terror laws and raising pensions for the elderly people.
Demirtas said the party would recognize Israel as an “occupying” force and supports the Palestinians in their “political and armed struggle.”
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