The Labor and Freedom Alliance of four parties formally announced their support for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the main rival of incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for the May 14 elections.
The alliance is led by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which will enter the race under the name Green Left Party (YSP) in the parliamentary elections. The HDP is known for its intricate ties to the PKK terrorist group.
In a statement on Friday, the alliance said they were “indebted to future generations” and had to “fulfill their historical duty in this turning point in Turkish politics,” the statement said. It called on its supporters to vote for the alliance’s lawmakers in the parliamentary vote and Kılıçdaroğlu in the presidential elections.
By refusing to field a candidate of its own, the HDP threw its tacit support behind Kılıçdaroğlu last month.
“We will vote for a presidential candidate who objects to the oppression of the Kurds,” local media quoted HDP co-leader Pervin Buldan earlier this month.
A top official from Kılıçdaroğlu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) recently confessed to the collaboration between Kılıçdaroğlu and the HDP, thus by association with the PKK, which keeps a stronghold in the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq from where it devises and launches attacks on Türkiye, as well as nearby cities and towns.
Sezgin Tanrıkulu, parliamentary candidate for the CHP from the Diyarbakır province, claimed that the election promises of the Nation Alliance, his party formed with five other parties, match with a declaration the HDP released two years ago.
In an 11-item statement titled “Document of Attitude” and dubbed the “Betrayal Declaration” in 2021, the party outlined its promises of social, economic, and most notably, administrative change, namely the removal of the current presidential system of governance, something the opposition bloc has based its election road map on. “We have a joint text that includes 2,400 items under which the leaders of the six parties have signed. Many points in this text overlap with the HDP’s declaration,” Tanrıkulu said in remarks that sparked broad backlash. Many condemned the affiliation as “treason” for advocating scandalous goals like regional autonomy in Kurdish-majority cities, the release of jailed terrorists and ethnic identity cards under the pretext of “strong democracy.”
The alliance between Kılıçdaroğlu and the PKK terrorists could indeed lead to an erosion of democratic rights for legitimizing the group’s so-called separatist agenda. Kılıçdaroğlu is said to have sought the HDP’s favor due to the party’s kingmaker status, as it enjoys more than 10% support.
On top of much criticism by rivals and partners alike for his rapprochement with the HDP, Kılıçdaroğlu has since garnered the praise of so-called PKK seniors Cemil Bayık, Murat Karayılan, Mustafa Karasu, Duran Kalkan, Bese Hozat, Helin Ümit, Sabri Ok and Remzi Kartal, as well.
All invariably claimed, “Our alliance must end the AK Party-MHP fascism,” referring to the People’s Alliance, an election bloc headlined by Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in partnership with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and other smaller parties.
Erdoğan too strongly condemned the collusion numerous times and railed at his chief rival for equating Türkiye’s Kurdish population with the PKK by “conspiring” with the terrorists and resolutely underlined the difference between the two.
“Kılıçdaroğlu is only after seizing the post with terrorists’ support, but Türkiye is not a state of terrorism and terrorists will not find take root here,” he declared in a recent speech.
The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization in the U.S., the European Union and Türkiye. It has been waging a bloody terrorist campaign against the country for four decades, attacking security personnel and civilians and massacring over 40,000 people since 1984.
