Four days before the presidential elections, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan traveled to Batman in southeastern Türkiye for a campaign rally. Addressing a crowd of about 55,000 people, the president underlined that Justice and Development Party (AK Party) governments have been a champion of the rights of Kurds, which comprises the majority in the province.
“Whoever interferes with the rights of my Kurdish brothers and sisters, they will have to face us; they will have to defeat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, our People’s Alliance,” he told the crowd, waving Turkish flags, flags of his ruling AK Party and the Free Cause Party (HÜDA-PAR). HÜDA-PAR, who supports Erdoğan in the presidential elections, enjoys the highest support in the province.
Erdoğan denounced the opposition bloc for the support it received from the terrorist groups, particularly the PKK, which exploits the Kurdish community for its campaign of violence under the name of the creation of a Kurdish “state.”
“You will vote either for those who reinstated the rights of my Kurdish brothers and sisters or this mindset that has the blood of our brothers and sisters on their hands,” he told the crowd, referring to the supporters of the opposition bloc he described as "those killing Kurds.” “They will release Selo, the same guy who caused the deaths of my 51 Kurdish brothers in Diyarbakır,” he told the crowd, referring to jailed co-Chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtaş. Demirtaş’s party, himself and senior cadres of the PKK have openly endorsed Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, Erdoğan’s main rival. Demirtaş is accused of inciting the 2014 riots of pro-PKK groups that led to the killings of Kurds not aligned with the terrorist group. The opposition bloc pledged to “free Demirtaş” if they won the elections. “If the nation stands with us, they cannot free him,” Erdoğan said.
The president slammed the opposition for exploiting ethnicity, referring to Kılıçdaroğlu’s emphasis on his Alevi roots and a video where he accused the government of branding Kurds as terrorists. “They try to incite strife, but no one can build walls between brothers and sisters. You cannot separate Sunnis and Alevis, Kurds and Turks,” Erdoğan said.
Erdoğan listed the deeds of AK Party governments for the Kurdish community. “We changed the perception of the state as an evil entity and established that the state is benevolent through our efforts. We removed the denial policy, which dismissed people’s values and culture. We took many steps for Kurds, from establishing a Kurdish television station to introducing Kurdish as an elective course at schools,” he said. Erdoğan underlined that they also removed the presence of PKK in the region through counterterrorism operations. “Now children can freely run on the streets of Batman. Mountains, once occupied by the terrorists, now echo with the sound of herds and songs of dengbej (Kurdish folk song performers),” he said.
Earlier on Wednesday, Erdoğan emphasized more rights and freedoms, but above all, an entirely “civilian” constitution was on his agenda. The president pledged to bring the issue to the Parliament’s agenda and work on its implementation after the vote. “We expect the contribution of representatives of the judiciary,” he told an event to mark the 155th anniversary of Danıştay, Türkiye’s top administrative court.
“We want Türkiye to have a constitution drafted by national will, a civilian and pro-freedom constitution. Accomplishing it means removing the last dark cloud hovering over our democracy,” the president said at the Ankara event. “It is one of the most important goals of our vision 'Century of Türkiye,'” he added, referring to a set of ambitious goals for Türkiye’s development Erdoğan announced last year.
Since 1982, the current Constitution, drafted following a military coup, has seen several amendments. The bloody 1980 coup, which led to the detention of hundreds of thousands of people along with mass trials, torture and executions, still represents a dark period in Turkish political history. Erdoğan wants Türkiye to have a civilian-drafted constitution by 2023, coinciding with the centenary of the foundation of the Republic of Turkey.
In his speech, Erdoğan hailed “one of the most important administrative reforms” accomplished by constitutional amendment in 2017 that paved the way for a switch to an executive presidency. “We redefined the relations between organs of governance, judiciary and execution and reinforced the principle of separation of powers. Thus, we raised the standard of our democracy and the same amendment also ensured the impartiality of the judiciary, saving it from the burden of past controversies,” he said.
“There has always been a debate on relations between the judiciary and other state organs, but it became hurtful in our country, especially during the coup and military tutelage,” Erdoğan said about military juntas’ hand in rewriting the Constitution. He also spoke about the influence the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) once held in the judiciary “that worried us all.” “Thank God, we wiped out the presence of members of this gang of traitors from our judiciary and began a new era,” he said. A large number of prosecutors and judges and other officials were removed from their duties and some were jailed after FETÖ’s 2016 coup attempt.
