The criminalization of Turkey’s democratically elected Kurdish politicians is continuing full swing with the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusing the country’s largest pro-Kurdish block of being “equal to” the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

“It's crystal clear and their leaders admit as much themselves,” Erdogan claimed in an interview with Turkish state broadcaster TRT on Sunday. Erdogan added that the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) was no different from the PKK’s Syrian branch, known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG). Both militant groups are classified as terrorists by Ankara.

Erdogan’s wholesale demonization of the Kurdish political movement echoes the rhetoric used by Turkey’s past military-backed coalition governments to justify the shuttering of the HDP’s multiple forerunners on flimsy terrorism charges. It also underscores his tactical alliance with far-right nationalist leader Devlet Bahceli. Erdogan told TRT that he hoped it would endure “till the grave.”

Indeed, the president’s salvos may have been more about electioneering than his latest incarnation as the PKK’s nemesis, a role that has bolstered his standing among the country’s hawkish top brass. Meral Danis Bestas, an HDP lawmaker from the southeastern province of Siirt, said that Erdogan’s claims about the HDP were “risible” and that his real intent was to disrupt potential cooperation between it and the rest of the opposition.