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The spectacular success of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey’s June 7 general elections gave rise to fresh hopes for peace and the beginning of a new democratization process, but unrest is not giving up without a fight.
The HDP garnered 13.1% of the national vote and won 80 seats in parliament, with about 1.1 million non-Kurdish citizens voting for it. Although HDP Co-chair Selahattin Demirtas issued a call July 14 for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to lay down its arms, reports from the field suggest that it will not be all that easy for the HDP to free itself from perceptions of being a mere instrument of the Kurdish movement’s military wing instead of an independent, civilian element of the movement.
