Turkey: Erdogan Seeks Pre-Election ‘Chaos’ But Will Fail, Says Imprisoned Demirtas

The prisoner Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas said that the attempt to ban his leftist party is part of his plans Recipe Tayyip Erdogan to cause “chaos” in the Turkish opposition before this year’s elections elections, but he emphasized that this will not save the president from defeat after two decades in power.

Speaking to Reuters from a prison in Edirne in northwestern Turkey, Demirtas called on Turkey’s main opposition coalition to work with his party, the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP), to win the presidential and parliamentary elections. parliamentary elections expected to take place in May. However his future HDP it is not at all secured: A prosecutor is seeking to shut down the party, accusing it of ties to Kurdish militants, capping a years-long crackdown on the third-largest party in Turkey’s parliament.

Demirtas, who he is no longer the leader of the party, but remains an important political figure despite the fact that he is in prison since 2016, said Erdogan and his nationalist partner, Devlet Bakhceli, were behind the legal moves to shut down the HDP. “The aim of these two is to win elections by creating vacuum and chaos in the opposition, weakening the HDP before the elections,” Demirtas says in his written answers to questions sent to him through the HDP, describing the timing of the case as a “conscious political choice.”

The government claims that the Turkish courts they are independent and deny that there is any political interference. Asked about Demirtas’ claims, Erdogan’s office declined to comment, but a senior official said: “It’s very interesting that he’s talking about chaos, considering the history of the HDP. The surveys do not say at all that ‘Erdogan is losing’. These statements seem completely unfounded.”

The HDP, which has allied itself with smaller left-wing parties that took part in Sunday’s rally, maintains an uneasy relationship with the most nationalist elements of Turkey’s six opposition parties. The party currently plans to nominate its own presidential candidate, but Demirtas does not rule out backing a joint opposition candidate against Erdogan. Asked about his own future when he is released from prison, Demirtas stated that he does not wish to return to the forefront of party politics: “For me, the page of active representative politics closed a long time ago. I’m still just fighting».