Jun 20, 2018

With only days left before landmark elections in Turkey, pressure is intensifying on the one party that could swing the outcome, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). More than 50 party members and canvassers were detained in separate early morning raids in the eastern province of Erzurum, the southeastern province of Sirnak and in the western provinces of Bursa and Izmir, the opposition daily Evrensel reported. Among those detained were senior figures from the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), the HDP’s sister organization in the mainly Kurdish southeastern region.

In Bursa, four of the HDP’s ballot box monitors were also detained. The legal grounds are unclear but the political motive is plain, HDP officials say: It's to torpedo the party’s efforts to campaign and secure the minimum 10% of the national vote required to win seats in the parliament. Should the pro-Kurdish bloc, which commands the affection of a swelling number of non-Kurds, breach the 10% barrier, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development party would lose its parliamentary majority.

Although Erdogan’s long coveted executive presidency that will formalize his sweeping powers and scrap the premiership will come into effect after the June 24 polls, a parliament controlled by the opposition could make the strong man’s life harder. For instance, as veteran Turkey analyst Alan Makovsky observed in a policy brief for the Center for American Progress, “Parliament will still have the authority to overturn presidential decrees and the president is not allowed to overturn by decree legislation that was passed by Parliament.” Moreover, the president “is not allowed to issue decrees in areas that the constitution reserves for parliamentary legislation, for example declaration of war or permission for foreign troops to enter Turkish territory.” None of this matters so long as the AKP retains control of the legislature, so it will stop at nothing to ensure it does.

Today, the Supreme Election Council passed a new measure that counts as valid envelopes containing ballots without formal stamps from the election officials in charge of ballot boxes at polling stations. The move follows an earlier change in rules that counts unstamped ballots as valid as well. HDP officials charge that these changes combined with the presence of security forces at polling stations are calculated to skew the results in the government’s favor.

The playing field is already uneven: The HDP's presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtas is in prison facing a slew of flimsy terror charges and is having to conduct his campaign with the help of his wife and social media accounts run by his adviser. Although the former human rights lawyer has not been convicted, Erdogan continues to label him a terrorist at public rallies. Some 56 DBP mayors who would otherwise join in the electoral effort are also behind bars on similar charges, among them Gultan Kisanak, the intrepid co-mayor of the Kurds’ informal capital, Diyarbakir, and one of the Kurdish movement’s most powerful orators.