Party leader accuses Erdogan of anti-Kurdish election campaigning

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A leader of a pro-Kurdish party on Saturday accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of running an anti-Kurdish election campaign and equating Kurds with terrorists.

“Erdogan's policy during the election campaign is as follows: he conducts his campaign using the word and concept ‘terroristan’ for Kurds and the region where the Kurdish people live,” said Tulay Hatimogullari, co-chair of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) in a speech at an early Newroz celebration in the Karakocan district of Elazig province.

“The geography where the Kurdish people live, the geography where peoples live, is not ’terroristan,’ it is Kurdistan,” she added.

The Turkish president has said on multiple occasions that Ankara will not allow the establishment of a “terroristan” along its southern borders, referring to the Kurdish-led autonomous administration of northeast Syria in Rojava, and positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Kurdistan Region.

Earlier this month, Erdogan said that by the summer, they will complete a zone that will “permanently resolve” security issues along the border with the Kurdistan Region and Iraq.

In Syria, Ankara has carried out successive operations since 2016 to expel from Syria’s north Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the backbone of the US-backed SDF that Turkey accuses of being a branch of the PKK. The aim of the military campaigns is to establish a “safe zone” to serve as a buffer between Turkey and Syrian areas under Kurdish control.

The word “Kurdistan” has been banned in Turkey since 2017 when the parliament also outlawed use of the terms “Kurdish regions” and “Armenian genocide.” Turkish leaders refrain from using the word Kurdistan in official settings and some officials refer to the Kurdistan Region as “North Iraq” or the “Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government.”

Kurds consider Kurdish-populated areas in southeast Turkey, northern Iraq (Kurdistan Region), western Iran, and northeast Syria (Rojava) to be part of Greater Kurdistan, which was divided up by Western powers a century ago when they redrew the map of the Middle East.

In 2013, when he was prime minister, Erdogan defended usage of the word “Kurdistan” during the early months of a historic but short-lived peace process between Ankara and the PKK.

Turkey will hold municipal elections on March 31.