Last year, two of Turkey's major political parties — the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the opposition's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) — put aside their differences and formed an alliance to ensure their parties' victory. They then continued their oppressive and threatening policies, basically taunting the much smaller Kurdish parties to form their own alliance if they wanted change, knowing how splintered the Kurds have been historically.

Now, many Kurdish movements have accomplished what seemed impossible: They have united to form the Kurdistani Election Alliance to run in the local elections in March under the umbrella of the existing pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

The alliance is made up of the Democratic Regions Alliance, which is actually the core of the HDP in the southeast region; Kurdistan Islamic Movement (Azadi); People and Freedom Party, an Islamist group; Kurdistan Communist Party (KKP); Kurdistan Democratic Party-Turkey (KDP-T); and Revolutionary Democratic Kurdish Association (DDKD).

How could such disparate groups come together?