Speaking to the press during a campaign visit to Hamburg for the upcoming Nov. 1st snap election,, pro-Kurdish, leftwing People’s Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş announced his party would be glad to work with the Republican People’s Party (CHP) for peace and democracy.
“The CHP, HDP and all forces of peace and freedom and democracy from outside parliament should be able to offer the Turkish public an alternative democratic government,” HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş told reporters in Hamburg.
Demirtaş was in Germany over the weekend to meet with European officials and Turkish voters as part of the HDP campaign for the upcoming November 1st election.
“Turkey can no longer operate with the low democratic bar set by this ideological approach,” he added, “Either the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) will reform itself, or Turkey will have to save itself from the AK Party.”
Noting that voters needed to stop thinking that peace was dependent on the AK Party retaining power, “Quite the contrary, the AK Party is the greatest impediment to peace. So there is no need to panic about what will happen if they lose power. It is a war government, a violence government. Saving itself from this government will be to the benefit of Turkey.”
Demirtaş also slammed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s statement earlier this month telling Turkey they should vote in 550 “domestic and national” MPs to Turkey’s 550-seat assembly, implying the exclusion of the Kurds from parliament.
“From what I understand, what he means is this: he wants 550 MPs that will blindly obey him and are completely at the mercy of the presidential palace and cannot do anything outside of what the president tells them to do,” said Demirtaş.
“That’s what he must mean by domestic and national. Because if we take domestic and national to mean representing all the communities living in the country, representing the love, respect and solidarity they have towards each other, then there isn’t a more domestic and national group than our party,” he added.
“Our country isn’t comprised of any single ethnic group,” he explained, “Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Circassians, Armenians, Sunnis, Alevis, Yezidis and Syriacs all belong here. And so the more colors and voices we present in parliament, then the better represented Turkey will be. I simply don’t agree with the president in this matter, we’re against homogenous representation.”