ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Analysts are divided on the impact that Turkey’s arrests of HDP officials will have on Kurds supporting the country’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which backs the president. Some believe these arrests will sway Kurds to leave the AKP, while others argue they will continue to back it. Turkish police arrested nine HDP MPs, along with co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, earlier this month. Turkey’s latest crackdown on Kurds has undermined hopes of a peaceful solution to the Kurdish problem in the country and broadened the rift between the two, shaking the AKP’s standing among the Kurdish electorate. In 1994 Turkish police, executing orders from then prime minister Tansu Ciller, raided the country’s parliament building and arrested the pro-Kurdish Democracy Party’s (DEP) MPs, prompting the Welfare Party’s (Refah) Kurdish members to resign. The DEP formed an alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and then voted together in parliament to lift legal immunity on Kurdish MPs. The HDP MPs and co-leaders were arrested two days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s meeting with Devlet Bahçeli, chairman of the MHP. Turkish writer Rusen Cakır compares these latest crackdowns on Kurds with Refah’s crackdown in 1994, believing that the Kurdish political movement will not be destroyed by these actions. “Erdogan meant something at least for the AKP’s Kurdish members, if not for all Kurds. The AKP attained the second largest voter turnout among Turkey’s Kurds, coming second to the HDP in Kurdish-dominated regions of the country. It was even ahead of the HDP in some of those areas. The Kurds are the most politically-minded in Turkey. They examine things meticulously. They will certainly respond to these arrests,” Cakir said in an interview with Medyascope TV. The operation to arrest the leaders of the two fraternal HDP and Democratic Regions Party (DBP) has been ongoing for nearly a year, against which the AKP Kurdish officials have had no public reaction. “Selahattin Demirtas is admired and considered charismatic even by Kurdish opponents. He has many fans all over the country. The West likes him too. We have to recognize that the HDP for the first time upstaged Erdogan in the June 7 elections. Demirtas rose to popularity even among the fans of MHP and other far-right political parties of the country,” Sezen Önay, a researcher in international relations and ethnic conflict, told Rudaw. Önay thinks that Kurds have now become the focus of many countries in the world. Turkey’s Kurds are, however, polarized, “because of differences of political opinion, and the authorities have unfortunately been exploiting this polarization. The majority of them are disconnected,” she added. Some research and opinion centers do not think that Demirtas’s arrest will prompt the Kurds involved with the AKP to turn their backs on the party. This, they argue, is due to their shared religious ideologies. “I don’t think these latest events will make any AKP Kurdish member to resign. One-third of the Kurdish electorate votes for the AKP because of Erdogan, who despises the HDP and the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). The arrest of the HDP co-leaders will therefore -- contrary to what might possibly be expected from them -- make this particular Kurdish electorate very happy,” Ozer Sinjar, head of Turkey’s famous opinion poll company, Metropol, told Rudaw. There is, however, another argument that the national identity has shaken the religious identity of Kurds due to their war against ISIS, and that Kurds backing the AKP have now come to realize this. “The AKP’s Kurdish electorate now understands the distinctiveness of their identity. This will make them regard the arrests of the HDP co-leaders and MPs as an aggression against the Kurds. I think the AKP will lose part of their Kurdish electorate, who might nonetheless not vote for the HDP,” Muhammad Yanmish, a Kurdish scholar at Diyarbakir’s Dicle University, told Rudaw. The AKP has been recently trying to attract the country’s Kurdish electorate through money and economic projects, appointing them in government departments which are close to him. Kurdish journalist Mahmud Oral argues that, “Peoples’ economic interests bear a lot on the AKP’s standing in the region. Many people got wealthy because of their involvement with the AKP. These people have now taken roots among the party’s fans.” Some election and opinion poll analysts argue that the HDP arrests will have no impact on the Kurdish electorate within the AKP. But they think these events will create conditions under which the HDP can surpass the 10 percent of the voter turnout in the next elections. “These arrests will hurt the HDP and will sabotage Kurdish politics in Turkey. They will, nevertheless, help the HDP remain above the electoral barriers,” Kemal Özkiraz, manager of the Avrasya company in Turkey, told Rudaw. He thinks that Refah’s story will not be repeated because, “Erdogan is running the AKP through force and neopatrimonialism. Besides, people who abandon his party will automatically be arrested over charges of connection with Fethullah Gülen or the PKK, and will therefore be regarded as traitors. That is why no one will desert the AKP,” Özkiraz explained. But Deniz Cifci, a scholar at the Mesopotamia University in London, disagrees. He thinks that the arrest of the HDP officials will move the AKP Kurds. “The Kurds backing the AKP did not rise against Erdogan in the past, despite his repressive crackdown on their fellow citizens, and this was due to the PKK’s mistakes. But the situations are different now. They now know that the arrest of Demirtas and his fellow colleagues is tantamount to the arrest of the Kurdish identity,” according to Cifci. Demirtas’s character and charisma will have a key role in swaying the AKP Kurds to abandon the party, he said. “The co-leader of the HDP is charismatic, regardless of whether or not he is close to the PKK. He introduced a new trend into the Kurdish and Turkish politics. Erdogan’s imprisonment of Demirtas will upset everyone. Kurds who have voted for the AKP in the past will desert the party because of Demirtas,” Cifci argued. “Demirtas’s arrest will increase the HDP’s voter turnout, even if the erroneous PKK policy has hurt the Kurds.”
