Runoff election: Pro-Kurdish HDP calls for voting against Erdogan

Before the run-off election for the Turkish presidency, the pro-Kurdish opposition party HDP called on its voters to vote against Erdogan. “Erdogan is never an option for us,” party leader Pervin Buldan said in Ankara on Thursday. Even before the first round, the party called for support for opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu. The votes of the HDP voters are considered significant for the CHP politician, who will face the incumbent and second-round favorite Recep Tayyip Erdogan on May 28.

Kilicdaroglu ended up around 4.5 percentage points behind Erdogan in the first round of the election on May 14 and then drew closer to the ultra-right Zafer party. Observers fear that the support of the HDP could cost him. The Zafer party and its leader Ümit Özdag are considered opponents of the HDP and accuse it of having ties to the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK. A closure procedure is underway against the HDP, which critics describe as politically motivated.

The HDP also criticized an agreement between Kilicdaroglu and Özdag on Wednesday. It is about the removal of political offices in connection with terrorist investigations. The HDP has lost 48 of its congregations to terrorism investigations into the office holders since the last local elections. Government officials were installed in their place. Critics see this as political repression by the AKP government against the pro-Kurdish party. The HDP and so far also Kilicdaroglu’s CHP had demanded that the local parliament decide on the replacement. In the agreement with Özdag, Kilicdaroglu has now refrained from doing so. According to the agreement, they want to continue deploying government representatives if terrorist connections are proven.