IZMIR, Turkey – Here in Izmir, Turkey’s most liberal and Westernized city, the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) is courting the Kurdish vote in its bid to write history in the June 7 parliamentary elections.
To become the first Kurdish party to win a seat in parliament, the HDP needs to pass the 10 percent “threshold” by winning a tenth of the votes. With an estimated 43 percent of ethnic Kurds living in Izmir and Turkey’s western, European portions, it is counting on those Kurds for victory.
But Izmir is also the traditional stronghold of the nationalist Republican People's Party (CHP), known as its “castle."
However, the HDP has been pounding away at the walls of the CHP castle.
An HDP rally last month by party leader Selahattin Demirtas pulled in more than 100,000 supporters.
“The crowd in Izmir is the confirmation that the HDP will pass the election threshold,” columnist Rusen Cakır wrote after the rally. However, he added that most of the attendees were Kurdish, concluding that, “apparently the HDP will win with the Kurdish votes” in Izmir.
But even if HDP gets all the Kurdish votes here, it will still need non-Turkish supporters to remain true to its claim of being a non-ethnic, truly Turkish party.
In Izmir, the HDP has been targeting the many liberal, secular and republican voters who chafe at the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) conservative, Islamist agenda.
In the last election, the CHP took 44 percent of the vote in Izmir - more than double its national share. And it is aiming higher this time.
Many in Izmir fear the growing conservatism of the current government, which in its 12 years of rule has been steering the country away from its secular pillars, emerging as Islamist-rooted party.
The AKP’s vision of three-children families and mothers staying at home does not appeal in Izmir. Nor does its rhetoric: last year, the prime minister’s deputy told women not to laugh in public. Recently President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has staunchly stood behind his old party, insisted that men and women were "not made equal."
The hunting ground for the HDP votes is among the many voters who are turned off by the AKP’s move toward conservatism. It is here that the pro-Kurdish party has been striving to gain the hearts and minds of the western Turkey.
During campaigning in Izmir, the HDP appeared to have foregone hanging pictures of the jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan – though there were slogans paying tribute to him.
At the rally with Demirtas, there were a few Turkish flags, as well as posters of Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey and the hero of the republicans and the nationalists.
“I trust their ‘we are a party of Turkey’ rhetoric,” said Adnan Caglar, a retired journalist. “They are doing their best to fulfill this promise,” he said, adding he believes that HDP will woo away many CHP voters.
But Izmir is also the part of Turkey where anti-Kurdish sentiments run high, entrenched for more than two decades, since the mass migrations of Kurds to western cities like Izmir in the 1990s.
An informal survey of voters in Izmir by Rudaw showed that the HDP has stirred debate among CHP diehards, but that many still are not ready to trust the pro-Kurdish party at the polls.
Ozgur Izmirli, a 33-year-old photographer, said he did not believe the HDP is a pan-Turkish party.
“It is insincere to claim that they are the party of Turkey. They are hand in hand with the PKK. They are only pretending -- just like the AKP once did -- to serve their own agenda. I might vote for the CHP,” Izmirli told Rudaw.
Bar owner Serdar Kızıltas falls into the category of voters who knows what he does not want: no more AKP. But he still does not trust the pro-Kurdish party.
“It is a new color, but they are still very much into their own problems,” the 36-year-old said. “I want them to succeed because that would harm the AKP. Plus, it is better to have them in the parliament than to fight with them. I won’t vote for them, not yet at least, because there are some among them still preserving the old racist rhetoric. I will vote for the CHP just to oppose the AKP.”
Janset Kankus, a 29-year-old academic, said the HDP has an attractive program, but it is playing to the minorities rather than all of Turkey. And he questioned the party’s ties to PKK.
“They might stop the AKP and will change many things in Turkey. But I won’t vote for them.”
