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Islamist Kurdish Group Seeks Role In Southeast Turkey

A new Kurdish party, the offshoot of a group that fought a bloody feud with the PKK in the 1990s, is emerging in southeast Turkey, raising questions on how the legacy of the Kurdish fratricide will be overcome.
A man reads a Koran as another listens in a mosque in the town of Cizre in Sirnak province, near the border with Syria March 22, 2013. Turkey's fledgling peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group is all over the headlines. After three decades of war, 40,000 deaths and a devastating impact on the local economy, everybody seems ready for peace. Pro-Kurdish politicians are focused on boosting minority rights and stronger local government for the Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey – With Turkey focused on fragile peace talks between Ankara and Kurdish nationalists, another streak of Kurds — loyal not to rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan but to Allah — are silently mounting a bid to establish themselves on the Kurdish political scene. The newcomers are sympathizers of Hezbollah, an outlawed Islamist group unrelated to its Lebanese namesake, which fought the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in a vicious “war within a war” at the peak of the Kurdish conflict in the 1990s. They say they are committed to peaceful politics and want to end the Kurdish fratricide for good. But with no formal peace between Hezbollah and the PKK, mutual mistrust continues to run deep, holding the risk of rekindled tensions when electioneering heats up ahead of local polls next year.

Founded in December, the Free Cause Party — whose acronym “Huda-Par” doubles as “Party of God” — hopes to capitalize on Kurdish allegiance to Islam, which remains strong although the PKK’s three-decade struggle has secularized large segments of Kurdish society. The party leaders, who keep contact with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, position Huda-Par as a third contender for the vote in the mainly Kurdish southeast —  the opposite of the secular Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), the PKK’s political extension, and a “more Muslim” alternative for Kurds disenchanted with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

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