Turkey: should we fear an increase in anti-Kurdish violence between now and the next elections?
The HDP risks being banned by the Constitutional Court in the coming months on the grounds that it is linked to the PKK, an armed group classified as terrorist, and the party's offices are regularly attacked.
AP - Emrah Gurel
Text by: Anne Andlauer
5 mins
The main pro-Kurdish party, the People's Democratic Party, or HDP, affirms its fear of an increase in anti-Kurdish violence in Turkey by the next elections scheduled in two years.
He accuses President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of playing on divisions to better perpetuate his power.
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From our correspondent in Istanbul,
It was the murder last week of seven members of a Kurdish family that revived the debate on this extremely sensitive subject. The Dedeoğlu family - a couple and their five children aged 30 to 45 - were shot dead on the evening of July 30 in their home in Konya. They had migrated about thirty years ago from Kars, in the east of the country, to this province of central Anatolia and according to them, they had been in conflict with a family for about ten years. neighbors. "According to them", because the Dedeoğlu had told their story to the press after being attacked for the first time in May by about fifty people. They then explained that their neighbors had threatened them with death by presenting themselves as nationalists who were going to rid the district of the Kurds. At the time,seven people had been imprisoned, then five released. The murderer is a 33-year-old neighbor.
Immediately after the fact, however, the Turkish authorities claimed that the massacre had nothing to do with an act of anti-Kurdish racism. This is even the first thing the Minister of the Interior said, when justice had just opened an investigation. President Erdogan's communications director added, describing as a “lie” and “provocation” claims that this murder of an entire family had “ideological motives”. The official version is therefore that of a neighborhood conflict that would have gone wrong. But this is a version questioned by the lawyer for the Dedeoğlu family and the pro-Kurdish party HDP, who recall that this attack is not an isolated news item. July 21, still in Konya,a man had been killed in the assault on his family by several dozen people. Again, according to the victims, the attackers had uttered anti-Kurdish insults.
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A taboo topic
Is there a risk that this kind of violence will increase, as the pro-Kurdish party claims?
It is very difficult to say and some accuse in return the HDP of increasing this risk by raising the fear of violence between Turks and Kurds.
What is certain is that the subject is very sensitive.
It is even downright taboo since the vast majority of Turks maintain that racism or discrimination against Kurds - who constitute around 20% of the population - does not exist in the country.
Another certainty: the discourse of power does not facilitate appeasement. The pro-Kurdish party is currently the main target of the alliance formed between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ultranationalist MHP party. The HDP risks being banned by the Constitutional Court in the coming months on the grounds that it is linked to the PKK, an armed group classified as terrorist, and the party's offices are regularly attacked. In June, one of its members was even killed in the office in Izmir, in the west of the country.
The risk is in fact that of an amalgamation between the anti-PKK hatred (which is for example accused by the pro-government press of being behind the deadly fires of the last days), the political attacks against the HDP (which risk intensify with the approach of the elections) and the mistrust or even the hostility aroused in part of the population by any manifestation of Kurdish identity.
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