In Turkey’s strongest elections… Will the opposition succeed in achieving the difficult accomplishment?

A prominent Turkish opposition leader has spoken from his cell to urge the opposition alliance to use its best chance yet to win governing.

Selahattin Demirtas, who led the leftist HDP, Turkey’s third largest political group, before he was imprisoned in 2016 on charges of supporting terrorism, said that a united opposition that included the Kurds could prevent Turkey from sliding into “dictatorship.”

Decisive sounds

Turkey is moving towards an authoritarian regime, Demirtaş said in response to questions sent through his lawyer, “If the ruling party wins this election, Turkey will move to a new type of dictatorship,” according to the Financial Times.

The party has managed to stay in power by dividing society, but the unity of the opposition at the ballot box is important not only to overcome this polarization but to win the elections, according to Demirtas.

According to the British newspaper, the votes of the Kurdish minority in Turkey, which constitutes about 18% of the population of 85 million, are pivotal in the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 14 May.

The predominantly Kurdish HDP did not formally join the six-party coalition supporting center-left CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu for president, but chose not to nominate its candidate to avoid splitting the opposition.

“No party that doesn’t have the support of the Kurdish voters has ever come to power,” Demirtas said.

The British paper reported that Demirtas, who wields influence over the HDP’s grassroots through tweets posted by his lawyers, said he had not decided whether to back Kilicdaroglu in his bid to end the two decades of Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule.

The Turkish president faces his toughest electoral test yet as the cost-of-living crisis and the state’s response to the February earthquake eroded support for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Wide popularity

According to the British newspaper, although the opposition is united, Kilicdaroglu may not close the election in the first round according to opinion polls, due to the simple majority of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with HDP supporters seen as a decisive swing vote.

The government has cracked down on the Kurdish political movement since the collapse of the 2015 peace process with the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The illegal group waged a four-decade insurgency for autonomy in which more than 40,000 people were killed and the United States and the European Union were designated a terrorist organization.

Erdogan called Demirtas, his two-time rival for the presidency, a “terrorist” and rejected accusations of authoritarian rule, pointing to his half-dozen electoral victories since 2003.

According to the British newspaper, Turkey ignored the European Court of Human Rights’ 2020 order to release Demirtaş, a former human rights lawyer who was convicted on the basis of political speeches that often targeted Erdogan.