On August 19, Turkish government removed the office the recently elected mayors of Diyarbakir, Van and Mardin. The ruling AKP is unpopular in these areas for a while. PKK blames AKP for leaving Kobani to ISIS and ended up peace process in 2015. PKK had increased the terror between 2015-2017. Thus, enabled President Erdogan to win the hearts and minds of nationalist votes.
However, PKK reduced the terror attacks starting by 2017. It had been a new tactic to avoid HDP (pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party) to get formal and informal dialogues with other main stream parties and secular member of CHP.
It seems this new tactics pays off. With critical vote margin that allowed Imamoglu and Yavas to flip Istanbul and Ankara, respectively, away from AKP.
Removal of 3 mayors gives the opportunity to Imamoglu and CHP to woo Kurdish voters without having to ally with them officially. This was vital for CHP since most the voters are originally secular and nationalist. Thus, CHP aims to do things; one is to be an alternative party to HDP, second is to avoid any steps that undermines its own base of traditional CHP supporters in the process. And it seems, it is successful to most but arises eyes brows in some CHP supporters.
Moreover, CHP display of solidarity visit to each mayors had impact on Kurdish voters mind. Also, wives of Imamoglu, Kilicdaroglu (CHP President) and Demirtas (HDP leader) displays a direct attempt by CHP to continue to reach its outreach to Kurdish voters.
The genuine issue is the HDP image and actions. While Imamoglu visited Diyarbakir, a mother of 19 years old youngster shouting in front of Diyarbakir HDP office asking his son released from PKK. The mother insisted that her son was captured by HDP some time ago and sent to Syria to PKK camps to fight against ISIS and Turkish army. She wanted her son back and protested HDP to create discrimination and use brute force on youngsters.
It is clear that HDP does not abandon its relationship with PKK/YPG. Although they denied, it is many times proved that they supply manpower to PKK/YPG. And that is a great concern to Turkish population. It is unclear what AKP strategy might look like from now on. Noone can be able to put a bet on President’s next move. But noone knows what HDP really wants. It is clear that HDP cannot (and does not) want to national party. Their aim is to win the elections in east and south-east of Turkey whereas increasing its votes as much as possible in the country. However, CHP image allying with HDP while HDP is supporting and supplying logistics to PKK/YPG would be real worry to secular voters in CHP. This would increase the likelihood of rebellion in the party before the coming elections in 2023 or even before that if an early election would take place.
