“AKP is the largest Kurdish party. AKP is the largest party of the Kurds. Therefore, the AKP will continue to do what it has been doing for 22 years in terms of opening up every field from freedom to economy, from health to culture, for both Kurds, Turks and other citizens,” Osman Nuri Kabaktepe, head of AKP office in Istanbul, told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman on Thursday.
The AKP is a self-described conservative democratic party which has the support of Islamist and nationalist Turks. It has also garnered great support from conservative Kurds.
Turkey will hold provincial elections on Sunday. The AKP seeks Kurdish votes in Istanbul to regain the city which it lost to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) five years ago. The loss was partly attributed to the support Kurds gave the opposition candidate. The ruling party also wants to boost its performance in Kurdish areas in the southeast of the country.
AKP’s cabinet in 2013 entered a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) armed group, paving the way for an unprecedented opening towards Kurdish culture. The development also allowed Kurdish politicians to speak freely about their rights which were previously seen as taboos. The talks, which were mediated by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), collapsed in 2015, followed by intense urban fighting in the country’s Kurdish areas.
The pro-Kurdish HDP, which has rebranded itself as the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) due to legal issues, won dozens of municipalities in the 2019 polls but months later the state removed the elected co-mayors of the party and replaced them with pro-government administrators, in most cases governors. This was the fate of most other municipalities the pro-Kurdish party won in the election. A large number of the elected officials were arrested and many of them remain in jail for alleged links with the PKK.
“In Turkey, as you know, we have removed all the obstacles such as speaking Kurdish, making Kurdish music, providing Kurdish education, choosing it as an elective course in schools, and providing Kurdish education in private schools,” the head of AKP in Istanbul said.
The DEM Party is the AKP's main rival in the Kurdish provinces.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is also the leader of the AKP, held a massive election rally in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir (Amed) on Wednesday. He said that the Sunday elections are a “turning point” for Turkey’s Kurds.
"Hopefully, March 31 will be a turning point where our Kurdish brothers will be free from all oppression and decide the future of themselves and their city with their free will," he told his supporters.
The AKP performed poorly again in the general elections last May.
“In the elections held last May, we could not reach the number of votes we desired in both the parliamentary and presidential elections in Diyarbakir. However, I believe that the election result did not please you,” he acknowledged, claiming that the alleged presence of 70,000 people in his rally proves his point that people are not satisfied with the 2019 election results and are seeking change.
Kabaktepe told Rudaw on Thursday that he believes Kurds, including supporters of the DEM Party, will vote for their mayoral candidate in Istanbul, Murat Kurum, who is in a neck-and-neck race with CHP’s Ekrem Imamoglu.
“We see our Kurdish brothers as the essential element of the AKP, Turkey and Istanbul. Everything we do, we will do together. We will make our decisions together. Today, we have Kurdish brothers in the AKP provincial administration and municipal administrations,” the senior AKP official said.
There is a long history of animosity and conflict over Kurdish issues and rights in Turkey. The state has at times gone as far as denying the very existence of Kurds. Turkey's Kurds were provided limited cultural rights when Erdogan's AKP came to power two decades ago. The party has also appointed Kurdish ministers to its cabinets. The incumbent finance and foreign ministers are among them.
