HDP’s Demirtaş rules out coalition with AK Party after elections

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• published: 28 May 2015
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Pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) leader Selahattin Demirtaş has said the party does not plan to form a coalition with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) nor it will lend indirect support to the AK Party if his party passes the election threshold. “We will not form a government with the AK Party either from outside or from inside,” Demirtaş said during a live interview with CNN Türk's Ahmet Hakan on Wednesday night. “Of course, we are not running in the elections to be in the opposition with the AK Party. We are preparing to be in the government in the following elections,” he continued. Demirtaş played "bağlama" and sang two songs during the interview aired on CNN Türk television. The fate of the HDP, which hopes to cross the 10 percent national vote threshold to enter Parliament on June 7, will be critical not just for the Kurdish minority but also for the political future of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AK Party he co-founded. Should the HDP cross the barrier, it could take 50 seats from the AK Party, potentially causing the AK Party to lose its majority and be forced to form either a coalition or minority government. That would make it more difficult for the AK Party to pass the constitutional changes Erdogan wants to create a powerful executive presidency. The AK Party managed to receive the majority of votes and form governments on its own in the past three elections, but polls suggest increasing support for the HDP may cause the AK Party lose its majority in the June 7 elections. During the interview, Demirtaş once again expressed confidence that the HDP will surpass the threshold, vowing to quit his post as party leader if the HDP fails to receive less than 10 percent of the national vote. In a separate interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Demirtaş said the June election would lack legitimacy if the threshold deprived it of parliamentary representation but that it would remain a partner in peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Kurdish parties have in the past run candidates as independents to skirt the threshold. Now the HDP is seeking to broaden its appeal beyond its Kurdish base and propel itself into the legislature. Should it fail, there will be no representatives of pro-Kurdish opposition parties in Parliament. Kurds make up an estimated 20 percent of a population of 77 million people. In 2011 HDP-linked independent candidates won 36 seats in Parliament, accounting for 6.5 percent of the vote. Opinion polls currently show it close to 10 percent, while Demirtaş won 9.76 percent in an August 2014 bid for the presidency. "A lack of representation in the legislature ... would create a crisis of legitimacy, it would weaken the belief that Parliament represents all of Turkey," Demirtaş said. The leftist HDP has been a key interlocutor in Erdoğan's peace efforts with the PKK, aimed at ending the terrorism problem in the mainly Kurdish Southeast that has killed 40,000 people over three decades. "If we are unable to enter Parliament, it just means there won't be a parliamentary group," Demirtaş said. "But we will continue ... to be Turkey's fourth-biggest party, to engage in politics and to continue our struggle on all of our issues," he said, adding that he hoped the peace talks will resume after June following two months of inertia. Turkish nationalists accuse the HDP of links to the PKK, and Erdoğan and the AK Party are wary of losing those votes because of their advances on the peace process. In a speech in the Black Sea city of Samsun earlier this month, Erdoğan spoke of "the political party which is run by the terrorist organization," in apparent reference to the HDP. There have also been dozens of attacks on the party's offices in the run-up to election day. Demirtaş said the harsh campaign rhetoric had reduced trust in the government's commitment to the peace process. "It's apparent now that it only views the resolution process as an electoral tactic," he said.