The prisoner KurdDemirtas leader said today that he is retiring from active politics and called on his party officials to do a “thorough self-criticism” after its below-expected performance in last month’s Turkish election.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP)who contested the elections under the banner of another party due to the risk of being banned due to alleged links with militants, secured 8.79% of the votes in the parliamentary elections of May 14.
In his election 2018, the HDP had won 11.7% of the vote. It remains the third party in the Turkish National Assembly after the May elections.
“I sincerely apologize to our people for not being able to carry out a politics worthy of them,” former HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas told the Artigercek news website from the Edirne prison where he is being held in northwestern Turkey.
“Although I will continue my struggle with resistance from prison like all my comradesI am retiring from active politics at this stage”.
Prosecutor testified request to ban HDP in March 2021accusing it of having ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and Turkey.
The HDP denies having ties to the PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish state for decades in a conflict for autonomy that has left at least 40,000 people dead.
Demirtas he was co-chair of the HDP from 2014 to 2018. Although imprisoned since 2016, he has remained a prominent political figure in Turkish politics, issuing daily political messages through his Twitter account to his more than two million followers.
The HDP and its allies did not nominate a candidate in the presidential election and supported the main opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. In the runoff on May 28, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won 52.2% of the vote, extending his 20-year stay in power. Kilicdaroglu got 47.8%. Demirtas said he would remain a member of the HDP and called on his party to do self-criticism.
“What we need most is internal party democracy. When intra-party democracy declines, mistakes follow one another.” Demirtas had run for president twice, first in 2014 and again behind bars in 2018, when he came third with 8.4% of the vote.
He said he had told the HDP leadership before the election that he was willing to run again in this presidential election, but his offer was rejected. “My candidacy could have increased our votes… But I still don’t know why it was rejected,” he said.
Demirtas, 49, was previously sentenced to three years in prison for promoting the president. He remains in prison and faces a life sentence in a trial with more than 100 other HDP politicians accused of inciting the 2014 protests in which dozens of people died.
According to APE, in the speech after his victory, Erdogan said that it is not possible to release Demirtas and called him a “terrorist”. Kilicdaroglu had pledged that if he won the elections, Turkey would comply with European Court rulings Human Rights demanding the release of Demirtas.
Source: News Beast
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