Destroying the souk to save itASKED how he is feeling these days, Selahattin Demirtas forgoes the pleasantries. “I’m trying to be doing well, given the circumstances,” he says, taking a seat at his office in the Turkish capital, Ankara. Amid unrelenting bloodshed in the Kurdish southeast, Mr Demirtas’s mood has darkened. Only last June, his People’s Democratic Party (HDP) pulled off a major election upset, denying the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party the parliamentary majority it had held for 12 years. Today, the man once hailed as the Kurdish Obama and the saviour of Turkey’s hapless opposition faces spurious terror charges from the government and dwindling support among both Kurds and Turks. If Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were to call a snap vote, say pollsters, the HDP would probably miss the 10% threshold needed to make it into parliament.
This is largely Mr Erdogan’s doing. He has marched Turks back to the ballot box to reclaim his majority, unleashed mortars and tanks against militants in Kurdish cities, locked the HDP out of the mainstream media and stripped its MPs,...Continue reading
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