|
Turkey polls: Nationalists set for comeback
20.7.2007 |
|
|
|
July
20, 2007
Ankara, Turkey, -- Before the general
elections on Sunday, the leader of Turkey's hardline
nationalists has attacked Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan.
Emphatically, Devlet Bahceli flung a hangman's noose
from a podium to make the point during a political
rally: the prime minister is soft on 'terrorism' and
should hang the imprisoned leader of Kurdish rebels.
Turkey has abolished the death penalty, and there is
little chance that Bahceli will get his wish for
now.
But his Nationalist Action Party is expected to make
a comeback in a sign of growing frustration with the
Kurdish guerrilla problem as well as skepticism
about Turkey's bid to join the European Union. |
Devlet Bahceli. AP |
Opinion polls indicate
the party, known by its Turkish acronym MHP, is
likely to return to Parliament after a five-year
absence and could become the third-largest group of
lawmakers.
The same polls suggest the Islamic-rooted party of
Erdogan is expected to retain a majority of seats,
albeit by a slimmer margin.
Even so, the MHP could emerge as a key player in any
effort to form a coalition, though it is hard to
tell where its allegiances might lie in a showdown
between Erdogan's camp and a secular opposition that
believes he is trying to impose Islam on society.
The MHP has secular traditions, but many supporters
come from the same traditional background as poor,
conservative Muslims who back the ruling party.
Kurds and EU
The nationalist party has tried to harness anger
over surging violence by separatist rebels from
Turkey's ethnic Kurdish minority, estimate to 25
million Kurds.
It is also exploiting a growing view that the EU has
been overbearing and arrogant as Turkey tries to
join the European club.
Bahceli has urged stronger action against the
imprisoned Abdullah Ocalan's rebel Kurdistan
Workers' Party, or PKK, and against Iraqi Kurds who
many in Turkey believe are at least tacitly
cooperating with guerrillas striking Turkey from
bases in Kurdistan region (northern Iraq).
Bahceli threw the hangman's noose after Erdogan
poked fun at him for reluctantly agreeing to abolish
the death penalty as part of EU-oriented reforms in
2002, when the nationalists were a junior member of
the coalition government.
Bahceli said Erdogan should have used his
parliamentary majority to engineer the execution of
Ocalan.
''If we have the majority, I will bring back hanging
for war and terror crimes,'' Bahceli said at another
rally in a husky smoker's voice made more hoarse
from constant public speaking.
Bringing back capital punishment would require a
constitutional change.
Bahceli, a former lecturer in economics, took
control of the party in 1997 and ousted radicals,
restraining the street fighting of young party
members.
Battles in the 1970s between leftists and the Gray
Wolves, an organization that Bahceli helped form as
a student in the 1960s and which acts as the party's
youth wing, killed around 5,000 people and prompted
the military to seize power in 1980 to restore
control.
Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman who wounded Pope John
Paul II in 1981, was a Gray Wolf.
Bahceli often appears reserved and unassuming,
despite his past radical activities. Followers greet
him by clasping their fingers into a ''wolf'' sign.
One candidate on the nationalist party ticket is
Naim Suleymanoglu, a three-time Olympic gold
medalist in weightlifting who is known as the
''Pocket Hercules'' for his diminutive size.
An ethnic Turk from Bulgaria, Suleymanoglu defected
to Turkey in 1986.
The party supports a military incursion into
northern Iraq to root out Kurdish rebels there.
Zeynel, a medical student, said he would vote for
Bahceli and accused Erdogan of doing ''nothing''
against the guerrillas.
Yet he refused to give his last name, not wanting to
be publicly identified with a party that opponents
describe as fascist and racist.
AP
** The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 25 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan ( Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 