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Turkey’s leftists, Kurds celebrate Syriza victory

The election victory of Greece's leftist Syriza party was cause for celebration among Turkey's Kurds and its marginalized left wing, both of which are seeking more electoral power.
Alexis Tsipras, Syriza party leader and winner of the Greek parliamentary elections, signs papers appointing him as Greece's first leftist prime minister after his swearing-in ceremony at the presidential palace in Athens January 26, 2015. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis (GREECE - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS) - RTR4MZDP

Late at night on Jan. 25, more than 500,000 Twitter followers of Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP) in Turkey, were dumbfounded by seeing him tweet in the Greek Cyrillic alphabet, which is fully incomprehensible to Turks.

But, for careful eyes, the same tweet was reproduced in Turkish below the one in Greek. It said: “On the road for the downtrodden and workers, bon voyage, my brother.”

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