Strong showing may help avoid ban
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Reuters
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Mart 13, 2009 00:00
The country's only legal Kurdish party hopes a strong performance in local elections this month will help it avoid a legal ban from the top court, the party's candidate for Istanbul mayor said Wednesday.
The vote is also a referendum on the Democratic Society Party's, or DTP, performance since becoming the first pro-Kurdish group to enter Parliament in more than a decade, DTP mayoral candidate Akin Birdal told Reuters in an interview.
The Constitutional Court is hearing charges about DTP links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has waged a 25-year armed campaign. The European Union has criticized the lawsuit, warning EU candidate Turkey that banning the DTP would violate Kurdish political rights.
"Our percentage of votes will determine whether the party is shut down because it will be difficult for the court to ignore a strong political mandate," said Birdal, who is the founder and former chairman of Turkey's Human Rights Association, or IHD.
All but one of DTP's predecessors has been banned. The ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, escaped closure by the Constitutional Court last year on charges it was anti-secular. That ruling has given the DTP hope the court will opt not to shut it down, Birdal said.
Pro-Kurdish parties have traditionally fared poorly outside of the mainly Kurdish-populated Southeast. Birdal cited polls showing the DTP receiving about 5 percent of the vote in Istanbul, home to some 1.75 million eligible voters who are of Kurdish origin.
Istanbul has the world's largest Kurdish population after decades of migration from the country's Southeast, where incomes are about a fourth of the more affluent west. Kurds make up about 20 percent of Turkey's population of 71 million.
More than 40,000 people have died since the PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.
In the 2004 local elections, the DTP's predecessor saw its share of mayoral seats in the region halved to four, with the AKP picking up five seats. The DTP hopes to reverse those losses , Birdal said.
"Southeastern Turkey is the only region where the AKP faces real competition for its mayoral seats," he said.
21 seats in Parliament
DTP candidates won less than 5 percent of votes in the 2007 general election, and the party has 21 spots in the 550-seat assembly. The EU has praised Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government for expanding Kurdish cultural rights.
Birdal is not an ethnic Kurd, but he is the founder and former chairman of the IHD, which has worked to promote Kurdish rights since its inception in 1986.
Ahmet Türk, the DTP's chairman, last month addressed party members in Kurdish in Parliament and has so far avoided disciplinary action. The last time Kurdish was spoken in the assembly, in 1991, four Kurdish deputies were stripped of their immunity and jailed for 10 years. "We don't expect him to face criminal charges, but if he does, his trial will turn into a trial on the right to speak Kurdish, and that is a fight that the establishment already knows it has lost," Birdal said.
The Constitutional Court is hearing charges about DTP links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has waged a 25-year armed campaign. The European Union has criticized the lawsuit, warning EU candidate Turkey that banning the DTP would violate Kurdish political rights.
"Our percentage of votes will determine whether the party is shut down because it will be difficult for the court to ignore a strong political mandate," said Birdal, who is the founder and former chairman of Turkey's Human Rights Association, or IHD.
All but one of DTP's predecessors has been banned. The ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, escaped closure by the Constitutional Court last year on charges it was anti-secular. That ruling has given the DTP hope the court will opt not to shut it down, Birdal said.
Pro-Kurdish parties have traditionally fared poorly outside of the mainly Kurdish-populated Southeast. Birdal cited polls showing the DTP receiving about 5 percent of the vote in Istanbul, home to some 1.75 million eligible voters who are of Kurdish origin.
Istanbul has the world's largest Kurdish population after decades of migration from the country's Southeast, where incomes are about a fourth of the more affluent west. Kurds make up about 20 percent of Turkey's population of 71 million.
More than 40,000 people have died since the PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.
In the 2004 local elections, the DTP's predecessor saw its share of mayoral seats in the region halved to four, with the AKP picking up five seats. The DTP hopes to reverse those losses , Birdal said.
"Southeastern Turkey is the only region where the AKP faces real competition for its mayoral seats," he said.
21 seats in Parliament
DTP candidates won less than 5 percent of votes in the 2007 general election, and the party has 21 spots in the 550-seat assembly. The EU has praised Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government for expanding Kurdish cultural rights.
Birdal is not an ethnic Kurd, but he is the founder and former chairman of the IHD, which has worked to promote Kurdish rights since its inception in 1986.
Ahmet Türk, the DTP's chairman, last month addressed party members in Kurdish in Parliament and has so far avoided disciplinary action. The last time Kurdish was spoken in the assembly, in 1991, four Kurdish deputies were stripped of their immunity and jailed for 10 years. "We don't expect him to face criminal charges, but if he does, his trial will turn into a trial on the right to speak Kurdish, and that is a fight that the establishment already knows it has lost," Birdal said.