COPENHAGEN, Denmark – The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) will soon merge in Turkey’s parliament, with a top leader explaining it was to broaden the appeal of the two pro-Kurdish parties.
"We've decided deputies to be represented under the HDP group in parliament by transferring the BDP deputies to the HDP,” HDP co-chair Ertugrul Kurkcu told the official Anadolu Agency, adding the decision was taken after the March 30 local elections in Turkey.
He said that deputies from both parties would act jointly under the HDP umbrella in parliament during the August 2014 presidential elections.
BDP Chairman Selahattin Demirtas and deputy Sirri Sakik would also reportedly go under the HDP umbrella following un upcoming BDP congress.
According to Ahmet Alis, a historian from Bogazici University and an expert on Turkey’s Kurds, with this step BDP deputies hope to be able to appeal to the whole of Turkey, not just the country’s Kurdish southeast where BDP is strong.
“As it has been until now, the BDP had no strength outside the 15 Kurdish provinces in the southeastern part of the country. If they continued as BDP, they would not be able to reach out to the rest of Turkey,” Alis told Rudaw.
Kurkcu also said that the reason for the move was to broaden the appeal of the two parties to all of Turkey: “We will be the entire society's choice for the future.”
The HDP and the BDP are very close, and politically linked. During the local elections, candidates ran for office under the HDP banner in Turkey’s western provinces and under the BDP banner in the southeast.
Jakob Lindgaard, a lecturer at Copenhagen’s Danish Institute for Study Abroad and an expert on Turkey, told Rudaw that HDP was formed in 2012 as an umbrella party to encompass the BDP and some leftist parties, at the behest of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
