What's behind nationalist gains in Turkey’s Kurdish regions?
As many struggle to explain the rise in the nationalist vote in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast, some observers see the impact of police and military reinforcements in the region and the influence of the security establishment.
The most controversial results in Turkey’s June 24 elections came from the predominantly Kurdish provinces in the country’s southeast. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), whose hard-line nationalist rhetoric hardly appeals to the Kurds, saw a three-fold increase in its votes in the region, while the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the torchbearer of the Kurdish political movement, suffered a decline.
Given the diametrically opposed policies of the two parties, many analysts agree that swing votes and internal dynamics cannot explain the phenomenon. Hence, the MHP’s gains and the HDP’s decline require separate analyses.
Examples of how MHP votes increased from the November 2015 elections include the following provinces: Van (from 6,348 to 16,240), Mus (from 2,708 to 7,051), Diyarbakir (from 6,619 to 11,965), Mardin (from 3,701 to 10,426), Sirnak (from 3,081 to 9,368), Hakkari (from 2,232 to 5,166), Siirt (from 2,379 to 5,312).
Local observers note the MHP has made no special effort to boost its popularity in the region since the 2015 elections. Bahar Kilicgedik, a long-time journalist in Diyarbakir, told Al-Monitor that the MHP hardly did any campaigning ahead of the June 24 polls. Referring to MHP leader Devlet Bahceli, she said, “Bahceli never came to the region and never held any rallies during the campaign period. I failed to observe any activity on the part of the [MHP’s] provincial branches either. The only things I came across were the Bahceli posters hung on the facades of provincial offices.”
