Kurds in Türkiye vote for Justice and Development Party (AK Party) the most, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said of his ruling party amid a spat over the Kurdish question with his chief rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu less than a month until the presidential and parliamentary polls.

"Mr. Kemal has succumbed to the HDP’s blackmailing so much, he cannot even call the PKK a terror group," Erdoğan said in a televised interview late Tuesday, referring to the People's Democratic Party (HDP) currently in danger of being disbanded over its alleged ties to the PKK terrorists.

"Kılıçdaroğlu claims he’s intending to release the PKK’s ringleader if he wins, without showing any regard for this nation’s values, much less, and continuing a rhetoric built on lies," Erdoğan argued.

His remarks came hours after Kılıçdaroğlu defended Kurdish rights and accused the Turkish leader of stoking ethnic tensions for political gain.

Kılıçdaroğlu, also the head of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), leads a six-party coalition that is aiming to end Erdoğan’s two-decade rule on May 14 and claiming the presidential ballot appears too close to call this year.

In spite of objections and criticism from his own alliance partners, he has opted to embrace the HDP, pledging to free HDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş and PKK ringleader Abdullah Öcalan, both facing terrorism charges of various degrees, from jail.

His promises even garnered the praise of so-called PKK seniors who claimed "Our alliance must end the AK Party-MHP fascism," referring to the People’s Alliance, an election bloc headlined by the AK Party in partnership with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and three other smaller parties.

Erdoğan too has repeatedly lambasted Kılıçdaroğlu for "acting as the pawn of Western imperialists" and "receiving his instructions" from a mountainous region of northern Iraq where PKK militants have their rear base, especially after the HDP gave Kılıçdaroğlu its tacit support last month.

The six-party alliance includes an upstart right-wing party that refuses to work with HDP leaders in any future government that would form should Erdoğan lose.

The HDP had refrained from outright endorsing Kılıçdaroğlu out of an apparent fear that this might cost Kılıçdaroğlu votes with more nationalist Turks.

But it now appears on the verge of formally backing Kılıçdaroğlu’s campaign.

"We will vote for a presidential candidate who objects to the oppression of the Kurds," Turkish media quoted HDP co-leader Pervin Buldan as saying Tuesday. "We will announce this name in the coming days," she added. "We will tell you the name openly, don't worry."

Erdoğan on Tuesday once again slammed Kılıçdaroğlu for equating Türkiye’s Kurdish population with the PKK by "conspiring" with the terrorists and resolutely underlined the difference between the two.

"He struck a bargain with terrorists so binding, he won’t even say a word about what HDP members are doing to his CHP members but my people will not hand this country over to those working side by side with terrorists," Erdoğan said.

"The PKK and our Kurdish brothers and sisters are of course different for us. We can never have our Kurdish citizens and the PKK in the same view," Erdoğan stressed.

"If one is looking for an anti-Kurdish enemy, one must look at the HDP and the CHP. They have tormented Kurds for decades while the AK Party recognized and remedied their grievances and met their demands for rights and freedom," Erdoğan said, referring to the removal of the ban on the Kurdish language in 2001, the year the AK Party came to power, and the opening of a Kurdish-broadcasting national TV channel in 2009.

"The CHP does not trouble itself with loving my Kurdish citizens, it’s all a lie," Erdoğan said. "There is nigh a trace of them in the east or the southeast. Kılıçdaroğlu is only after seizing the post with terrorists’ support but Türkiye is not a state of terrorism and terrorists will not find a foothold here."

The HDP has picked up more than 10% of the vote in past national elections and is seen as a kingmaker in the race.

Erdoğan has enjoyed some support from Kurdish voters since the early stages of his rule, most recently in the 2018 presidential election when he garnered 20-50% of the votes in Kurdish-majority provinces like Şanlıurfa, Mardin, and even Diyarbakır, which overwhelmingly voted for the HDP.

His government launched a national unity project in order to resolve the Kurdish issue, which continued with a "democratic expansion" phase and evolved into a normalization period by 2013 and fell apart after three years when terrorists resumed attacks.

Linking the open endorsement from PKK circles for Kılıçdaroğlu to a "fire stoked by the West," Erdoğan further said Germany and France "pull the lead in encouraging these terrorists," likely referring to the PKK members and sympathizers being allowed to hold propaganda rallies across Western Europe.

The "Kurdish question" has been a pretext for the PKK to find legitimacy for its separatist agenda, so-called Kurdish self-rule, and the exploitation of the Kurdish community.

Kurds in Türkiye, even those in northern parts of Iraq and Syria, have fallen victim to the PKK’s brutal campaign where it has been forcing Kurdish citizens to pay tributes to it, and either killing or brainwashing children to join or assist their terrorist acts.

Despite harsh state measures to contain and eradicate terrorism, which Ankara says is the root of the Kurdish issue, the group finds a political foothold in parties like the HDP, many of whose mayors are facing charges of collaborating with PKK terrorists and providing logistical support and equipment.

‘No credit for sympathizers’

Erdoğan’s remarks were similarly echoed by Defense Minister Hulusi Akar who also on Tuesday declared, "Türkiye will never give credence to those who refuse to distance themselves from terrorists."

Akar, himself a parliamentary candidate for the AK Party from the central Kayseri province, argued there were "people working to turn our people against one another but we will never allow that," a thinly veiled allusion to Kılıçdaroğlu.

One of the major attempts to hold Türkiye back from advancing and growing stronger is terrorism, Akar went on to say. "Our troops have come far in combating terrorism but now some people are saying they will release and absolve the terrorist ringleader. They’re encouraging terrorists; they want to destroy every achievement against terrorism won by the blood of thousands of martyrs.

"Allowing this collusion to take hold would mean restarting everything, which would be a massive loss for our people and our people will never let it happen," Akar concluded.