What do Turkey's Kurds expect from Biden's presidency?
Pro-Kurdish political parties in Turkey are keeping their hope for Joe Biden’s presidency with utmost caution.
Turkey’s Kurds have reacted with cautious optimism over the election victory of former Vice President Joe Biden, hoping that new administration policies might force Turkey to pursue a more reconciliatory approach toward the Kurds, following the Trump administration’s nonchalance toward Turkey’s ongoing heavy-handed campaigns against the Kurdish groups at home and in Syria.
Among the hopeful is Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the third-largest party in the Turkish parliament. The HDP has been the main target of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government clampdown campaigns to quash political opposition in the country as hundreds of its members, including one of its top leaders, Selahattin Demirtas, have been imprisoned.
Hisyar Ozsoy, HDP deputy co-chair of foreign affairs, has confirmed the cautious optimism the US election results generated among the Kurds, reminding Biden’s criticism of President Donald Trump’s lenient policies toward Erdogan.
“[Erdogan] has to pay a price,” Biden told the editorial board of The New York Times in late 2019. “What I think we should be doing is taking a very different approach to him now. … Making it clear that we are in a position where we have a way which was working for a while to integrate the Kurdish population who wanted to participate in the process in their parliament.”
