Yazidi candidate hopes for historic first in Turkish election
If the pro-Kurdish HDP passes the 10% threshold in the general elections on June 7, Feleknas Uca will be the first Yazidi member of the Turkish parliament.
"A political action movie" is how Feleknas Uca, 38, describes politics in Turkish parliament, referring to macho behavior and physical fights that sometimes break out. She thinks it will be difficult for her to adjust to it, after having served two terms, from 1999 to 2009, in the European Parliament in Brussels. "In Europe," Uca said, "you are respected for your opinion. In Turkey, politics are carried out undemocratically."
Still, she is eager to start working in the Turkish parliament after the June 7 general elections. If her party, the People's Democracy Party (HDP), a leftist party with roots in the Kurdish political movement, manages to exceed the 10% threshold, she will for sure occupy one of the orange seats in the "meclis." She is the fourth HDP candidate for the HDP in Diyarbakir, an HDP stronghold that is expected to send at least eight or nine representatives to Ankara.
"People are being tortured in this country," Uca said in an interview with Al-Monitor, "and mothers lose their children. Working in the Turkish parliament will not be easy, but compared with what others live through, that is only a small thing."
Uca was born and raised in Celle, a town in the north of Germany. She is not Muslim like most Kurds, but Yazidi; Yazidis are followers of an ancient religion originating in Mesopotamia. The family is part of an 8,000-strong local Yazidi community. The contrast is huge: in the whole of Turkey, less than 1,000 Yazidis remain, after 80,000 to 100,000 of them, also from Iraq and Syria, left for Europe in the second half of the 20th century.
