MAINZ, Germany – For Turkey’s ruling party and its pro-Kurdish challenger in next month’s parliamentary elections, Germany is an important battleground, a place to squeeze out votes from the 1.4 million eligible Turkish voters living here.
Although polls will open in Turkey on June 7, absentee voters – such as Turks in Germany – were allotted a time period of May 8-31 to cast their ballots.
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its rival pro-Kurdish Peoples‘ Democratic Party (HDP) have been campaigning for every last vote from Turkish citizens abroad, especially Germany.
“We are falling short a bit,” Demirtas said at a rally in Berlin in March, referring to his party’s goal of winning the 10 percent of votes needed to sit in parliament as a party.
“Now it is in your hands to turn the vote shortage into a success, because for the first time there will be a chance to vote for our party and Germany will determine this victory,” he declared.
This is the first time that Kurds in Turkey are running as a party, instead of as independents, making the polls historic.
The HDP is a direct challenger to AKP, which stands firmly behind President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions of widely boosting his own powers – something the HDP has vowed to stop.
“(You) are our power outside the country,” Erdogan said at a speech in Karslruhe this month before thousands of cheering supporters. Constitutionally, the president must remain neutral, but that has not stopped Erdogan from doing all he can for his old party.
“For us you are no migrant workers, you are our strength in foreign countries,” he told some 14,000 supporters turned out to hear him in Karlsruhe.
Bahtiyar Gurbuz, an HDP campaigner in Berlin, said fellow volunteers had been busy trying to get the HDP’s message to voters.
“We did a lot of work in the last weeks. In Berlin alone, we have sent about 40,000 letters by Mr Demirtas to potential voters,” Gurbuz said. “If every Kurd entitled to vote in Germany votes for the HDP we would overcome the threshold with ease.”
Several hundred thousand of the 1.4 million Turkish citizens eligible to vote are of Kurdish origin. For the first time, Kurds living abroad are able to vote for their own party in Turkish parliamentary elections.
One of the voters is Ozan Basibuyuk, who has roots in Northern Kurdistan in Turkey.
“Of course I voted for the HDP,” he told Rudaw after casting his ballot. “There are a lot of Kurds voting for the AKP, but most of the voters are talking about the HDP -- conservatives as well as socialists and others. Most of the people I know have voted for the HDP.”
“We all hope for change,” said Gulistan Cetinkaya, a 70-year-old who regretted not being able to vote this year because she has exchanged her Turkish passport for German citizenship.
Earlier this month, many Kurds in Germany were angered at receiving phone text messages from the AKP, urging them to vote.
“No time, no problem,“ read the message in Turkish. “Bring your Turkish ID card with your ID number, your driver’s license or your passport to vote from May 8 to May 31 between 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. AK Party.”
Even many Kurds who are not originally from Turkey received the short text messages (SMS), angering them over what they complained was a loss of privacy.
Although the voting in Germany has gone smoothly for the most part, there have been some hitches. There were reports that older voters who had failed to request an absentee ballot were not allowed to vote.
“The people were told beforehand about the electoral procedure,“ explained Basibuyuk, whose own vote for the HDP went smoothly. “Everybody could check everything on the internet. However, there are many older people who don’t know how to use the Internet. I think we have lost some votes due to this hitch.”
At a polling site in the German city of Frankfurt, a Turkish imam was caught trying to vote twice for AKP. As he was caught red-handed, he reportedly said he “just wanted to test” staff at the polling station.
A survey released in March showed that the rate of Turkish citizens who believe that “elections will not be fair” has increased from 28 percent in 2007 to 43 percent in 2015 – with many suspecting that AKP will do all it can to retain its hold on power.
“This policy of the AKP and its followers is known to us. We definitely expect some ballot rigging, like in the past,” said Gurbuz, the HDP volunteer in Berlin. “Nevertheless, I believe we will overcome the threshold and be victorious in this year’s elections.”
