Reuters: Kurdish Party Challenges Turkish Polls

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

True. DEHAP is mainly a Kurdish Party but it is not just a
Kurdish Party. Many Turkish leftists joined forces with the
Kurdish party HADEP to form DEHAP, although HADEP is by far the
largest component of it. Let us see what tomorrow's election will
bring us.

Best,
Sabri

+++++++++

Kurdish Party Challenges Turkish Polls
Fri Nov 1,11:04 AM ET
By Ayla Jean Yackley

HAZRO, Turkey (Reuters) - The fragile peace that has fallen on
Turkey's war-scarred and poverty-stricken southeast has brought
neither jobs, new industry nor a return to the former pastoral
way of life.

Many here instead count the peace dividend in a new sense of
freedom to cast their votes for the pro-Kurdish Democratic
People's Party, or DEHAP, in Sunday's general election.

"We can easily support DEHAP now. This time we do not have to
fear what our votes will cost us," said Murat Celik, a
25-year-old shopkeeper waving a yellow DEHAP flag at a campaign
rally in Hazro, a small, dusty town squeezed in a narrow valley
between rocky cliffs in Diyarbakir province.

When residents last went to the ballot box three years ago,
battles between the Turkish army and Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK) separatists still raged in the surrounding mountains.

Voters felt intimidated, Celik said, warned by soldiers against
backing DEHAP's predecessor HADEP, accused by the authorities of
acting as a front for the PKK.

"But this year the Kurdish identity is out in the open," said
Celik as women dressed in traditional costume danced in large
circles to the music of shrill pipes and drums.

More than 30,000 people, most of them Kurds, died in nearly two
decades of fighting, but the violence has waned since the capture
of PKK commander Abdullah Ocalan in 1999.

Emergency rule, in place in much of the southeast since 1987,
expires in the last provinces at the end of November.

Turkey has in recent months liberalized strict bans on the use of
the Kurdish language in broadcasting and education and abolished
the death penalty, hoping the steps will win it entry talks with
the European Union (news - web sites).

"We have emerged from those chaotic years, and the political
atmosphere is kinder, gentler," said Osman Baydemir, a DEHAP
candidate for parliament from Diyarbakir, the regional capital of
the predominately Kurdish southeast.

"We are able to visit the towns and villages where we were
previously barred, we are allowed to hold large meetings. This
has caused a huge explosion in our support."

STORMY PAST

Polls show the left-wing DEHAP on the cusp of a 10 percent
threshold of the national vote which parties must clear to enter
parliament.

The prospect of a party in parliament with its roots in Kurdish
nationalism has shocked the political establishment. Prime
Minister Bulent Ecevit, whose own party falls far short of the
threshold, says a DEHAP victory would pose "serious problems for
the regime."

HADEP quit the election in September, fearing it would be
outlawed before the vote in a case pending before the
Constitutional Court. It was charged in 1999 with maintaining
ties with the PKK.

The electoral board in September barred DEHAP leaders Murat
Bozlak and Akin Birdal from standing in the election because both
men have served prison sentences for speeches they made in the
1990s.

The party itself escaped a ban in October after the electoral
board rejected the chief prosecutor's charges that DEHAP had
failed to meet technical criteria to contest the race.

Human Rights Watch said in a report this week that these
incidents had cast a cloud over the election.

Kurdish parliamentarians have had a stormy history in Turkish
politics. Four former MPs have been behind bars since 1994
serving 15-year jail sentences after their party was outlawed.

The defiant tone they set, including a refusal to take an oath of
allegiance to the republic, has been tempered.

"DEHAP has had an effective role in softening the environment by
making the appropriate arguments," said Baydemir.

"People no longer see DEHAP as an enemy movement that under no
circumstances would they vote for. We are no longer the party
that attracts the greatest opposition," he says.

A central plank of DEHAP's campaign is speeding up civil rights
reforms needed if Turkey is to go forward its bid to join the
European Union. It also promises to ease measures imposed by an
unpopular multi-billion International Monetary Fund bail-out
after a recession which has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

"The compass has shifted, people see the process of change as
inescapable," said DEHAP candidate Mahmut Sakar. "Those who want
democracy and a future in the EU don't just speak Kurdish."

Despite winning outright majorities in much of the southeast,
HADEP attracted just 4.8 percent of the national vote in 1999.

"What will make or break the day for DEHAP in this election is
whether they convince non-Kurdish voters they are legitimate and
good for Turkish democracy," said one western diplomat.

TURKEY'S "STEPCHILDREN"

"Everyone knows DEHAP will win in the southeast," said a local
official of a center-right party. "The race is for second place.
DEHAP won't pass the barrier and we'll be elected."

DEHAP, ironically, could by its success or failure determine the
nature of the government in Ankara.

If DEHAP fails to clear the hurdle, its votes will be discarded.
Parliamentary seats in the region will then be distributed among
parties able to enter the assembly.

If it makes it, the front-running Justice and Development Party
(AKP), second-placed in the region as a whole, would suffer the
biggest losses.

The prospect of failing the barrier embitters many.

"That amounts to stealing our votes. How can we call this a
democracy if no one represents us in parliament and the Kurdish
problem remains unsolved?" said Orhan Toptas at a teahouse
outside of the bustling DEHAP office in Haroz.

"The state does not take responsibility for us. They treat us
like stepchildren. Life is insufferable here."

Gendarme officers flank the winding road that leads to sun-baked
Hazro. A 14th century mosque atop a ridge dominates the town of
8,000 people who live in old stone houses.

Livelihoods scratched out from farming and animal husbandry have
been devastated by the separatist conflict. Per capita income in
the province is a quarter of the more prosperous west.
Unemployment tops 70 percent.

"The war is over, but we are left with the ruins, with the
poverty," said 65-year-old Serif Cakmak.

"Rebuilding this region may be too large a task for any party,
only God knows. But DEHAP is the only one that says it will try."


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