Erdogan bets on confrontation with Kurds to win over nationalists

A new wave of arrests of Kurdish mayors and politicians has shaken the political landscape of Turkey in the last days, in an apparent sign that the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is betting on confrontation to win nationalist votes.

On Friday, a court ordered the arrest of Ayhan Bilgen, the mayor of the city of Kars in eastern Anatolia, who belongs to the left-wing People's Democratic Party (HDP), the spokesperson for the rights of the Kurdish minority.Together with him, 16 HDP councillors and politicians were imprisoned, while Ankara appointed the acting governor-mayor, a tactic it has already used in 48 other municipalities where the HDP won the 2019 municipal elections.

The new arrests are based on an investigation by the public prosecutor's office into some incidents in 2014, in which fifty people were killed during protests of the Kurdish left against Turkey's passivity in front of the siege of the Kurdish city Kobani in Syria by the terrorist group Islamic State.

The prosecution accuses the HDP of having incited violence by calling these demonstrations, although the party claims that the vast majority of the dead were precisely Kurdish demonstrators.

The wave of arrests six years after the events has caused surprise in Turkey and seems to indicate that Erdogan has chosen a way of confrontation with the Kurdish left in order to divide the nationalist opposition parties.

The current government coalition is composed of the Islamist AKP, which has governed Turkey since 2002, and the ultra-right-wing MHP as a junior partner, but the polls make the president fear that in the next elections, scheduled for 2023, he could lose.

A survey of the company Avrasya points out that if there are elections now, Erdogan would stay at 38% against 42% of the probable CHP candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul.

Imamoglu won the mayor's office last year thanks to a coalition of the social democratic CHP with the IYI party, which split from the MHP in 2017, supported by the votes of HDP supporters, as it happened in other places such as Ankara, Adana and Mersin.

But to unite the Kurdish left with the Turkish nationalist right that still considers the HDP as the political arm of the Kurdish guerrilla, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), requires a lot of diplomacy from the leaders of both sides.

Dynamiting this front and attracting nationalist votes seems to be Erdogan's only option if he wants to win the next elections, maybe by bringing them forward to the planned date.

"The only way for the AKP-MHP alliance to stay in power, although it is far from guaranteed, is to consolidate its nationalist votes. The operation against the HDP because of the incidents in Kobani 6 years ago as well as the initiatives in foreign policy are part of this strategy", political scientist Necmi Erdogan told Efe.

In addition to the economic difficulties, with the Turkish lira falling to historical lows, two new parties created by historical figures of the AKP have appeared that have left the formation because of differences with Erdogan.

One of them is the former prime minister and former foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the other one is the former economy minister Ali Babacan, both heavyweights of the party, who could take part of the votes of the AKP if they decide to ally with the CHP.

But the votes of the HDP, about 10 % of the electorate, are indispensable for the opposition, and a strong offensive against this party can put the moderate right wing, which tries to appear neither as a friend nor as an enemy of the Kurdish left, in a difficult situation.

An outright closing of the ranks of the IYI party with the HDP could motivate many of its voters to return to the MHP, while an overt rejection would make it difficult for Kurdish left sympathizers to vote for a candidate of the CHP-IYI coalition.

"The 2019 elections showed that our party's strategy (of not presenting its own candidates in districts with a strong CHP-IYI presence) could beat Erdogan. This is why they are determined to neutralize the HDP," said HDP Vice President Mithat Sancar.

But the nationalist wave is not limited to the Kurdish sector. "We are in an authoritarian phase where even the decisions of the Constitutional Court are not accepted", political scientist Tarik Sengül said when reminding Efe of the recent offensives against the bar and medical associations as well as other civic institutions.

"It is a question of dividing the opposition, whether the elections are brought forward or not. In the past it has worked to use the Kurdish question as a dividing factor; we will see if it works again," the expert concludes.