Jailed Kurdish leader Selahatin Demirtash said the attempt to ban his leftist party was part of Tayyip Erdogan's plans to cause «chaos» in the Turkish opposition ahead of this year's elections, but said it would not save the president from defeat after two decades in power.
In comments to Reuters from Adrianople prison in northwestern Turkey, Demirtas called on the main coalition of the Turkish opposition to work with his party, the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democracy Party (HDP), to win the presidential and parliamentary elections expected to be held in May.
However, the future of the HDP is far from assured: a prosecutor is seeking to close the party, accusing it of links with Kurdish militants, thus culminating a long-standing crackdown on the third largest party in the Turkish parliament.
Demirtas, who is no longer the party's leader but remains an important political figure despite being in prison since 2016, said Erdogan and his nationalist partner Devlet Bahçeli were behind the legal moves to shut down the HDP.
«The aim of these two is to win the elections by creating a vacuum and chaos in the opposition, weakening the HDP before the elections,» Demirtas says in his written answers to questions sent to him through the HDP, and describes the timing of the case as a «conscious political choice».
The government claims that the Turkish courts are independent and denies that there is any political interference. Asked about Demirtas« claims, Erdogan's office declined to comment, but a senior official said: ‘It is very interesting that he talks about chaos, considering the history of the HDP. The surveys don't say at all that ’Erdogan is losing». These statements seem completely unfounded.".
Suppression
Critics of Erdogan's government, including Human Rights Watch, say the Turkish president is using the courts to silence political opponents.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled three years ago that Turkey must immediately release Demirtas, stressing that his imprisonment is intended to limit pluralism and debate.
Turkey's Constitutional Court opened the case against the HDP in 2021, prompting strong criticism from Ankara's Western allies. This month the court voted by a narrow majority to freeze the HDP's bank accounts while it considers charges against the party for links to the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The HDP denies the charges.
Demirtas was previously sentenced to three years in prison for insulting the president and now remains in jail and faces a life sentence in an ongoing trial along with more than 100 other HDP politicians accused of inciting the 2014 protests in which dozens of people died. The defendants deny the charges.
In addition to the imprisonment of Demirtas and other party members, many HDP members of parliament and mayors of the party have been dismissed and thousands of HDP members have been imprisoned.
If not banned, the HDP, whose core supporters are Kurds, is likely to play a role as a moderator in the elections.
Polls show the main opposition bloc coming neck and neck with the ruling coalition, but it needs the support of HDP voters to defeat Erdogan, whose popularity has been hurt by the poor state of the economy in recent years.
«Even if Erdogan puts pressure on voters, even if he tries to use tricks, he cannot avoid defeat,» Demirtas said. «A wide majority of people have lost their trust and faith in Erdogan and it is impossible for him to regain it.’.
«We are the people»
Ahead of the elections, Demirtas' Twitter account posts daily political messages to his more than 2 million followers. A song he wrote was played on Sunday at an HDP rally in Istanbul, where thousands of people chanted his name and held the party's red, yellow and green flags.
«We are not just an institution and a building. We are the people. You cannot shut down the people,» said Ferhat Encu, a former HDP MP who was jailed in 2016 with Demirtas.
Sharuhan Oluç, one of the top HDP officials who was at the rally, said the party was preparing for the possibility of being banned, but added, without elaborating, that it would not leave its voters without alternatives.
Last week the HDP submitted a request to postpone the judicial process until after the elections in order to preserve democratic principles.
Demirtas said he believes the court will not shut down the HDP because it will not want to interfere in politics.
The HDP, which has allied itself with smaller left-wing parties that participated in Sunday's rally, maintains an uneasy relationship with the more nationalist elements of the six Turkish opposition parties.
The party is currently planning to propose its own presidential candidate, but Demirtas does not rule out the possibility of supporting a joint opposition candidate against Erdogan.
Asked about his own future when he is released from prison, Demirtas said he does not wish to return to the front line of party politics: «For me, the page of active representative politics closed long ago. I am still just fighting.».
