On May 2nd, a week and a half before Turkey’s elections, the street musician Cihan Aymaz, who performed frequently in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district, victim of a racist murder. A passer-by asked Aymaz to sing the well-known nationalist song Ölürüm Türkiye (I will die for you, Turkey). An open provocation as Aymaz was known for frequently singing political Kurdish songs.
When he refuses to sing the song, the man pulls out a knife and stabs the singer. He trips, falls backwards into the water and dies. The singer comes from the Kurdish province of Riha (Turkish: Urfa). Like many others in the economically troubled region, his father lost his job and moved to Istanbul with his family to earn some money.
A political reality for many Kurdish families in Turkey. In addition to his work as a singer, Aymaz has volunteered with the Yeşil Sol Partisi, the pro-Kurdish opposition party which has openly denounced Turkey’s economic and national crisis, which is affecting his family and millions of others.
Dastan Jasim is a research associate at the GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies. She researches Kurdish issues in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Cihan’s fate is not unique. Headlines appear almost weekly from various Turkish cities in which Kurdish families are being brutally victimized by racist attacks.
19
percent of the total population of Türkiye are Kurds.
It is often not their home towns where this happens, but mostly Turkish cities to which they move because of the economic misery in the occupied Kurdish areas. A misery that has only gotten worse in recent years since the whole country has been in economic decline.
This time, however, the marginalized nation is the “kingmaker”. The number of Kurds in Turkey is estimated at at least 15 million to 25 million, which is 19 percent of the total population. The systematically neglected and politically persecuted population group is relevant for Turkey, in terms of numbers, but also in terms of content. This is particularly evident in these elections.
Unexpected identity politics of the opposition
Erdoğan repeatedly toured the provinces with a Kurdish majority known as religious-conservative centers and courted their votes.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, on the other hand, advertises with criticism of the dramatic economic conditions and this year even unexpectedly with identity politics: Two videos he published with the titles “Alevi” and “Kürtler” caused a sensation.
The opposition leader, who himself comes from the Kurdish-Alevi region of Nazimiye in the province of Dersim (Tunceli in Turkish), the home region of the PKK co-founder Sakine Cansız, who was murdered in Paris, openly addressed his affiliation with the Alevi religious minority for the first time.
In his videos he denounces discrimination and racism, but also the criminalization of Kurds. A man who, like many others, was named after the founder of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Ataturk, is making what appears to be a 180-degree turn.
Demirtaş calls for support of the Kurds
His gesture is positively received by many Kurds. The Yeşil Sol Partisi is calling for him to vote for the presidency and has refrained from nominating its own candidate. Even the imprisoned former HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş shared Kılıçdaroğlu’s likeness and tweeted that his vote was for the opposition leader.
The Kurdish Yeşil Sol Partisi is driven by the horrendous lack of alternatives.
Dastan Jasim, political scientist
Demirtaş is even betting that Kılıçdaroğlu could end the division in Turkey. On Sunday, many Kurds will probably put their cross under the pro-Kurdish party Yeşil Sol and also under the name of the candidate Kılıçdaroğlu.
This is of great symbolic value, but behind it lies the fact that the Yeşil Sol Partisi is driven by the horrendous lack of alternatives. Conversations with Kurds in the country bear witness to this desperation.
Kılıçdaroğlu supported illegal military operations
Many hope that gains from Kılıçdaroğlu will give them a few years of breathing space, fewer arrests, perhaps economic recovery and, above all, an end to the permanent military attacks in Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi-occupied Kurdistan. Your skepticism is understandable. It was the CHP, Kılıçdaroğlu’s party, that repeatedly approved military operations in Kurdistan that violate international law.
In the country, the ideological basis that makes right-wing nationalist murders possible must change fundamentally.
Dastan Jasim, political scientist
There was also a similar precedent: in 2019, the pro-Kurdish opposition called for the CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoğlu, who was widely praised as a reformer and progressive, to be elected mayor of Istanbul. He succeeded because thousands of Kurdish votes helped him achieve this strategically important victory against the AKP.
In the end, however, this did nothing for the Kurds: In October 2019, the CHP voted for the military offensive in Rojava, the Kurdish regions in northern Syria. The same Imamoğlu they voted for exulted on Twitter about the supposed defense of the fatherland.
For many Kurds and all other population groups who do not fit into the nationalist founding myth of Turkey as a state of a unified people, there is no real alternative in this election, as in many previous ones. For them, it’s about the lesser evil.
That will only change when the country’s ideological base, which makes right-wing nationalist murders like that of Cihan Aymaz possible in the first place, changes fundamentally.
