Selahattin Demirtas

The March 31 Turkish local election results showed democracy is alive, but if the opposition wants to win there needs to be unity of the Kurdish and Turkish left, writes Arash Azizi.

Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won 53% of the vote in the June 24 presidential election.

This extends his rule until at least 2023 — but now with the sweeping executive powers narrowly endorsed in a referendum last year.

The Kurdish-led left-wing Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which won 13.2% of the vote in 2015 national elections to become the third largest parliamentary group, has faced growing repression as the Turkish regime of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned increasingly dictatorial. Last year, all of the HDP’s 59 MPs were hit with arrest warrants, amid mass arrests of voices critical of the government.

Destruction wrought by Turkish state in Diyarbakır. Three-hundred-and-fifty thousand. That is the number of people displaced since the Kurdish-Turkish “resolution process” was interrupted by the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last year.
Turkish police repress protests against Erdogan's renewed war. The outcome of Turkey’s June 7 parliamentary elections promised so much.
In the June 7 Turkish elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has ruled Turkey since 2002, won the largest vote and share of the new parliament – 258 of the 550 seats. But in a dramatic rise in its vote, the left-wing People's Democratic Party (HDP) came equal third, winning 80 seats.
One of those injured in June 5 bombing of HDP election rally casts their vote.