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How a tea kettle came to symbolize Turkish election opposition

The Pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and their imprisoned leader and candidate, Selahattin Demirtas, are running a positive and creative election campaign, rattling the nerves of an increasingly anxious Justice and Development Party and government.
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On June 5, Turkish authorities arrested two high school students for spray painting a kettle on the wall of a house in Istanbul. Next to the kettle they wrote, “There is a message coming from the kettle.” The reason for their arrest was reported as creating propaganda for terror organizations. Next to and beneath the kettle were acronyms for banned organizations. The owner of the house, rather than filing a complaint against the young men, came to their defense, explaining, “They only drew the kettle image. The names of organizations were already there.”

The kettle has become a political symbol thanks to Selahattin Demirtas, the imprisoned former chairman of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) also known as the “Kurdish Obama.” Demirtas, who was arrested in November 2016, had in September 2017 allowed his attorney to send tweets from his Twitter account. After the tweets, guards thoroughly searched his space to figure out how he was able to tweet. Demirtas had to publicly state through Twitter that he was not actually typing and sending the messages. “Naturally they could not find any tweets in the rooms,” he joked. “There was a tea kettle in the room, but they concluded it is not able to send tweets.”

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