New 'Party of God' Will Divide Kurdish, Turkish Islamists
Turkey's newest political party, Huda-Par, a legal Islamic Kurdish party from within Hezbollah, marks a rapid divergence of the paths of Kurdish and Turkish Islamists, writes Kadri Gursel.
A new party was established in Turkey, called Hur Dava Partisi, on Dec. 17. Its abbreviated name is more interesting, made up of the first syllables in the Turkish words hur (free), dava (cause) and parti to read "Huda-Par.” Huda is Persian-origin word used both in Turkish and Kurdish meaning "God." You can therefore think of this party’s name as the “Party of God,” just like Hezbollah.
Of course, when we say Hezbollah here we are not talking of the Shiite Hezbollah of Lebanon, but the Sunni Islamist Kurdish Hezbollah of Turkey.
Huda-Par and Hezbollah sharing a meaning is not a coincidence, but design. Huda-Par, now a legal political party, is a successor of the obscure and cruel organization of 1990s, the Sunni Islamist Kurdish Hezbollah. Huda-Par is the final phase of the evolution of the armed Islamist Kurdish movement since the beginning of 2000s.
We must note, however, that though this Hezbollah is Sunni, its establishment was influenced heavily by the Islamic Revolution and was very close to the Iranian regime in 1990s.
