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Kurds abandon AKP

Thousands of pious Kurds, including entire tribes, have parted ways with the AKP, convinced that it has no real intention of reconciling with the Kurds.
Kurdish demonstrators gesture as Selahattin Demirtas, co-chair of the HDP, Turkey's leading Kurdish party, addresses a crowd in Diyarbakir October 9, 2014. A three-week battle for the Syrian border town of Kobani has also led to the worst streets clashes in years between police and Kurdish protesters across the frontier in southeast Turkey. In Diyarbakir, Turkey's biggest Kurdish city, five people were killed in clashes on Monday and Tuesday between Islamist groups and PKK supporters, a senior police office

With only weeks to go before Turkey’s June 7 general elections, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is using every means to stop the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party (HDP) from passing the 10% threshold to enter parliament. The HDP, for its part, is bent on overcoming the barrier and spoiling President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s dream of becoming an omnipotent, executive president. While campaigning on a brand-new platform of nationwide appeal, the HDP is resorting also to the oldest of vote-pulling methods.

To bolster the HDP, the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), created in 2007 as an umbrella organization for Kurdish political and civic groups, has been busy luring Kurdish tribes — and their block votes — to the HDP. As a result, many formally pro-AKP tribes have changed allegiances in recent weeks.

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