Turkey’s HDP burns bridges with interim gov’t led by AKP

ANKARA

CİHAN photo

Two ministers from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), EU Minister Ali Haydar Konca and Development Minister Müslüm Doğan, resigned Sept. 22 from their posts in an interim cabinet in a sign of growing tension over the ongoing conflict between Turkey’s security forces and militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 

The HDP announced the resignations of Konca and Doğan, both from the HDP and members of an interim cabinet steering the country to the snap parliamentary election, in a brief statement. The HDP statement was released less than an hour after a cabinet meeting chaired by AKP leader and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu earlier that day during which the two ministers presented their resignations.

“The Palace [President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] and the AKP, which he instructs, facilitated a war and coup mentality against the June 7 election results starting June 8,” Konca said in a joint press conference with Doğan after the announcement of their resignations. 

Konca blamed both Erdoğan and the AKP for embracing “a war concept” and abandoning the resolution process aimed at ending a three-decade conflict between the security forces and the PKK, while citing curfews in several southeastern provinces as signs of “a coup-like governance.” 

“We had entertained hopes that a cabinet without the AKP is possible. We are saying clearly and sharply that it is the AKP government itself which applied war in practice and made a coup in politics. Despite all its attempts at a massacre, it is the palace and the AKP itself that is experiencing the greatest fear. But we say to all of our peoples that despite all the facts we listed, there is no need for pessimism, and we state once more that we have no other option than getting rid of the AKP,” Konca said. 

He said the government’s two-month-old military offensive against the PKK had created a “hellish” situation “especially in Kurdish cities.”

“A logic of war has been put into place that makes us nostalgic for the days of martial law and the 1990s,” he said.

The HDP politician pledged that their party would not let Erdoğan transform the existing parliamentary system of the country into a presidential system where he would have near unlimited powers. 

“We will not make the one, whom we didn’t allow to become a president on June 7, president on Nov. 1 again,” Konca said.

The parties had engaged in hostilities even before the AKP government launched its “synchronized war on terror” in the second half of July, particularly in the run-up to the June 7 parliamentary elections.

In March, HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş infuriated Erdoğan with a short speech that said the party would not allow him to acquire the powers he craves.

“As long as the HDP exists, we will not make you [Erdoğan] president. We will not make you president. We will not make you president,” Demirtaş said at the time.

Meanwhile, a statement by his office said Davutoğlu would appoint replacements as soon as possible. 

“Mr. Prime Minister thanked them for taking part in the election government as a requirement of the constitutional obligation and said leaving was also their own decision. A commissioning will be made in the shortest possible time,” the İhlas News Agency (İHA) reported, quoting a statement by the Prime Ministry shortly after the release of the HDP announcement.