No suitable conditions for polls in Turkey's east, HDP says

ANKARA

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The co-chair of the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has claimed the conditions in the eastern and southeastern Anatolian regions of the country were unsuitable for an election campaign due to ongoing clashes between Turkish security forces and terrorists.“Our friends coming from these regions do not give good news. They say conducting an election campaign under these conditions is impossible. This is the objective of the [Justice and Development Party] AKP. If they would, they could provide the necessary conditions for polls even in one day,” HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş told reporters on Sept. 2 in Ankara.Demirtaş argued the presidency was aiming to increase its control of ballot boxes and polling stations during the Nov. 1 election in line with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s instructions. “The president already said [the Nov. 1 election] won’t be like the June 7 polls. His presidency will take the ballot boxes in hand. It seems he is in preparation to put his pressure on the ballot boxes as he seized [control of] the state.”Demirtaş said the AKP could even postpone the election if they anticipate their votes will decline further.“Boycotting elections is not on our agenda. We are working and discussing [how to] provide election security. There are serious violations in various parts of the region. But western parts of the country can hear only 10 percent of all of them,” he said.The HDP will compete in the election with all of its political mechanisms, he said, adding the party’s objective was to garner 20 percent of the votes on Nov. 1, nearly seven more points than it had in June.On a question about the killing of a doctor by outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants, the HDP co-leader harshly criticized the organization and said he cursed the incident.“Targeting doctors, nurses and all health personnel even in the dirtiest war conditions cannot be acceptable.Everybody should refrain from physically or verbally attacking health workers. We curse this [incident],” he said.A doctor identified as Abdullah Biroğul was killed by PKK militants on Sept. 1 on his way from Kulp to Diyarbakır in southeastern Turkey as he tried to escape from an identification check conducted by the militants.