Will there be a 'Kurdish AKP' in Turkey?
Turkey’s ruling party appears to be on a quest to weaken the Kurdish political movement by promoting divisions and polarization in the Kurdish community.
Turkey’s June 7 elections marked the end of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) supremacy in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, where it had been the No. 1 political party since its coming to power in 2002. The rise of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) in the region, which came at the expense of big AKP losses, has prompted the AKP to redesign Kurdish politics.
The first signal came ahead of the June 7 polls as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blasted a 10-point road map agreed between government representatives and the HDP as part of the settlement process. He later said he did not recognize the agreement and declared that the settlement process was over.
The strong result of the HDP in the June 7 polls resulted in intensified efforts by Erdogan and the AKP to curb the party, polarize the Kurdish electorate and weaken and reshape the Kurdish political scene.
The July 20 suicide bombing in Suruc, which targeted pro-Kurdish activists, came as a watershed, marking both the escalating threat of the Islamic State and the resumption of terrorist attacks by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The Kurdish-majority southeast has become the theater of bloodshed and destruction, and the Kurds now worry more about their security than political priorities.
