Before the election, Allman was hopeful that change was possible. He had planned to vote for Kilikdaroglu, who is backed by a broad coalition that includes the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP). “I believed that the opposition should have won in the first round and that they should have won in the second round, but the government would create voter fraud,” he told me over a glass of Gauloises. “They have been in power for more than 20 years and they have everything under their control,” Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) said in resignation.
The Kurds are Turkey’s largest ethnic minority and have faced constant oppression since the early years of the establishment of the Turkish Republic after World War I, with government restrictions placed on the expression of Kurdish culture, identity, and political representation. I’ve faced it. For Mardin’s Kurdish community, the situation is set to worsen with Turkey’s growing ultranationalism following recent elections and politicians looking to rally support ahead of next year’s local elections. There are concerns that this may be the case.
In May’s national elections, the vote share of hard-line nationalist parties increased, and the parliament became the most nationalist and conservative parliament in modern Turkish history, with an increase in the number of members from ultranationalist and Islamic extremist parties. . Experts have warned of what this could mean for Turkey’s Kurds, from the criminalization of Kurdish politics to the censorship of Kurdish media.
“Nationalism is turning into a more effective ideology in politics. Of course, this is dangerous,” Reha Ruhavioglu, director of the Diyarbakir-based Kurdish Research Center, said in an interview with Democracy in Exile. . “I think President Erdoğan is more likely to put pressure on Kurdish political representatives and Kurdish art and media rather than on Kurdish daily life.”
Campaign flag of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and a banner with a portrait of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Diyarbakır before Turkey’s recent elections on May 1, 2023. (Photo by Ilyas Akengin/AFP) Via Getty Images)
Daily life is already difficult for Kurds living outside Turkey’s Kurdish regions. Arman previously worked as a chef in Antalya, on Turkey’s southwest coast, where he said he was regularly harassed by far-right nationalist groups. “That was 10 years ago,” he said. “The situation is very scary for us now.” In public, whether shopping or at work, he is always treated as a Kurd — “‘Oh, he’s Kurdish,’ this kind of discrimination,” he said. “So I stopped working as a chef.”
Many Kurds like Arman feel they are being used as political pawns. “Before President Erdoğan came to power, he promised many things to the Kurds in order to win Kurdish votes,” Arman recalled. “He promised to make the Kurdish language visually and educationally legal. However, in the education system there is no elementary school education in Kurdish, so children cannot learn their mother tongue at school. .”
Arman fears that Turkification (the term given to the policy that emphasizes the homogeneity of Turkey’s culture, language and population) will continue after Erdogan’s rule and that the third team will continue until 2028. “Live in democracy,” he said. Among them are Kurds, refugees, Roma, the LGBTQ community, Arabs and women. “We have open-minded Turks who are willing to help us. We have a little bit of hope. But it’s an unfulfilled hope, because there may be some Turks who may accept you as a Kurd, but they will not accept that you want freedom, to have your own land and independence from Turkey,” he added.
Erdogan has cracked down on the Kurds since 2015, when the Turkish government’s fragile peace process collapsed due to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a radical Kurdish separatist group listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. I’ve been doing it. . The repression worsened in the run-up to this spring’s elections, with President Erdoğan attempting to ban the HDP over its alleged ties to the PKK, a charge the HDP denies. In a mass arrest in April, more than 100 people, including politicians, lawyers and journalists, were rounded up for ties to Kurdish armed groups. They joined many members of the pro-Kurdish political movement who have been imprisoned for years. Kurdish politicians arrested in recent years include mayors from across southeastern Turkey, who have been removed from office by the government in the name of “counter-terrorism” and called for new elections. Instead, they were replaced by “councilors” of the governor appointed by the Turkish government.
The Kurds were seen as key to supporting Mr. Kilikdaroglu’s attempt to unseat Erdogan as president. However, the opposition party lost support among some Kurds after the opposition candidate hugged the far-right, ultra-nationalist leader of the winning party during the run-off. Despite this, most Kurds I spoke to said they were still voting for Kilikdaroglu, including Lawin, a 29-year-old Kurdish film director who accompanied him to vote in his hometown of Mardin. It was.
