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TURKISH ISLAMIST PARTY EYES VICTORY OR SECOND PLACE IN DIYARBAKIR
Hurriyet Daily news, Turkey
March 20 2014
Diyarbakir/Ankara: 20 March: For the Free Cause Party (Huda-Par),
founded in December 2012 by members of a defunct association with
reported links to Turkey's outlawed Islamist Hezbollah organization,
the upcoming 30 March local elections are the first ever elections
in which it will run.
"We are asking for the votes that have previously been entrusted to
other parties because we did not exist as a political party on the
ground," Huseyin Yilmaz, Huda-Par's mayoral candidate for Diyarbakir,
told the Hurriyet Daily News over the weekend.
Yilmaz is the former chair of the now-defunct Association for
Solidarity with The Oppressed (Mustazaf-Der).
Mustazaf-Der was shut down in May 2012 for alleged links with the
Hezbollah terror organization, which is unrelated to the Lebanese
militant group, Hezbollah.
Yilmaz, who is a lawyer by profession, admitted that a number of former
Hezbollah members who served their sentences are now representing
Huda-Par. However, he insisted that there is no difference between
a former convict and an ordinary citizen, as long as the former has
served whatever his sentence is.
"They are using the presence among us of individuals who were convicted
of being members of Hezbollah as a method to 'illegalize' our party,"
he said.
Assertive
When asked what Huda-Par's goal was in Diyarbakir, Yilmaz sounded
confident, responding: "Winning."
"The aim is to win and we don't assume that we will get less than 40
per cent of the votes. For us, winning would be a success. Being the
third party, however, would definitely be a failure," he said.
The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and its predecessor parties have
been holding the Diyarbakir Metropolitan Municipality since 1999,
having won three consecutive local elections since then. It remains
the runaway favourite to win the 30 March election as well.
Yilmaz therefore suggested that targeting second place in the election
was a realistic target, saying his party should aim to receive more
votes than the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
"We are dealing with our own struggle and are not interested in the
'shift,'" Yilmaz said, referring to arguments over whether they will
attract people who earlier voted for the AKP or for the BDP.
"We cannot know from whom we will get more of the votes ...
Additionally, there are also people who didn't go to the ballot boxes
previously, and we are expecting some of those people to favour us.
Once, if a person's Kurdish identity is dominant he would vote for
the BDP, and if a person's Muslim identity is dominant he would vote
for the AKP. But now there is Huda-Par, and people from both sides
will go to the polls for us," he elaborated.
PM's style
Members and staff from the BDP's provincial branch, as well as
from election offices in Diyarbakir's districts, accuse Huda-Par of
"provocations" that have already led to a number of skirmishes between
young supporters of the two parties.
Yilmaz refuted these claims. "They are the ones provoking conflict
with us because the BDP and the PKK [the outlawed Kurdistan Workers'
Party] do not want to lose ground. They are deceiving young people
in order to get them to attack us," he claimed.
The roots of the hostility between the two parties go back a long way.
Similar to how Huda-Par has a connection with Hezbollah, the BDP
shares the same grassroots as the PKK. The jailed PKK leader Abdullah
Ocalan's posters are hung in every election office, as well as in the
BDP provincial branch's headquarters. "Freedom for Ocalan" is also
a popular slogan shouted by people during the BDP's electioneering.
Back in 1990s, the two organizations fought each other, while also
fighting with the Turkish state security forces.
In 2000, Hezbollah's founder Huseyin Velioglu was shot dead by police
in a siege in Istanbul, while more raids hampered it further.
According to unconfirmed reports, during the near decade-long fight
between the two groups, around 700 people lost their lives.
Today, it is a soft-spoken Yilmaz who criticizes Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan's style, which he says is "excluding" and "otherizing."
"A Muslim should be moderate. If you are governing, then you should
leave your party's pin aside. You should approach and treat all
equally without regarding sectarian, religious and ethnic differences
-Armenians, Greeks, Yezidis and Assyrians," he said, noting his
disapproval of remarks by Erdogan.
"They [his opponents] have even called us Jews, Armenians and, pardon
the word, Greeks," Erdogan said in an interview in 2011.
According to Yilmaz, the use of the word "pardon" for any person or
people is not fair and he added that "a Muslim should not deviate
from justice."
From: Baghdasarian
Hurriyet Daily news, Turkey
March 20 2014
Diyarbakir/Ankara: 20 March: For the Free Cause Party (Huda-Par),
founded in December 2012 by members of a defunct association with
reported links to Turkey's outlawed Islamist Hezbollah organization,
the upcoming 30 March local elections are the first ever elections
in which it will run.
"We are asking for the votes that have previously been entrusted to
other parties because we did not exist as a political party on the
ground," Huseyin Yilmaz, Huda-Par's mayoral candidate for Diyarbakir,
told the Hurriyet Daily News over the weekend.
Yilmaz is the former chair of the now-defunct Association for
Solidarity with The Oppressed (Mustazaf-Der).
Mustazaf-Der was shut down in May 2012 for alleged links with the
Hezbollah terror organization, which is unrelated to the Lebanese
militant group, Hezbollah.
Yilmaz, who is a lawyer by profession, admitted that a number of former
Hezbollah members who served their sentences are now representing
Huda-Par. However, he insisted that there is no difference between
a former convict and an ordinary citizen, as long as the former has
served whatever his sentence is.
"They are using the presence among us of individuals who were convicted
of being members of Hezbollah as a method to 'illegalize' our party,"
he said.
Assertive
When asked what Huda-Par's goal was in Diyarbakir, Yilmaz sounded
confident, responding: "Winning."
"The aim is to win and we don't assume that we will get less than 40
per cent of the votes. For us, winning would be a success. Being the
third party, however, would definitely be a failure," he said.
The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and its predecessor parties have
been holding the Diyarbakir Metropolitan Municipality since 1999,
having won three consecutive local elections since then. It remains
the runaway favourite to win the 30 March election as well.
Yilmaz therefore suggested that targeting second place in the election
was a realistic target, saying his party should aim to receive more
votes than the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
"We are dealing with our own struggle and are not interested in the
'shift,'" Yilmaz said, referring to arguments over whether they will
attract people who earlier voted for the AKP or for the BDP.
"We cannot know from whom we will get more of the votes ...
Additionally, there are also people who didn't go to the ballot boxes
previously, and we are expecting some of those people to favour us.
Once, if a person's Kurdish identity is dominant he would vote for
the BDP, and if a person's Muslim identity is dominant he would vote
for the AKP. But now there is Huda-Par, and people from both sides
will go to the polls for us," he elaborated.
PM's style
Members and staff from the BDP's provincial branch, as well as
from election offices in Diyarbakir's districts, accuse Huda-Par of
"provocations" that have already led to a number of skirmishes between
young supporters of the two parties.
Yilmaz refuted these claims. "They are the ones provoking conflict
with us because the BDP and the PKK [the outlawed Kurdistan Workers'
Party] do not want to lose ground. They are deceiving young people
in order to get them to attack us," he claimed.
The roots of the hostility between the two parties go back a long way.
Similar to how Huda-Par has a connection with Hezbollah, the BDP
shares the same grassroots as the PKK. The jailed PKK leader Abdullah
Ocalan's posters are hung in every election office, as well as in the
BDP provincial branch's headquarters. "Freedom for Ocalan" is also
a popular slogan shouted by people during the BDP's electioneering.
Back in 1990s, the two organizations fought each other, while also
fighting with the Turkish state security forces.
In 2000, Hezbollah's founder Huseyin Velioglu was shot dead by police
in a siege in Istanbul, while more raids hampered it further.
According to unconfirmed reports, during the near decade-long fight
between the two groups, around 700 people lost their lives.
Today, it is a soft-spoken Yilmaz who criticizes Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan's style, which he says is "excluding" and "otherizing."
"A Muslim should be moderate. If you are governing, then you should
leave your party's pin aside. You should approach and treat all
equally without regarding sectarian, religious and ethnic differences
-Armenians, Greeks, Yezidis and Assyrians," he said, noting his
disapproval of remarks by Erdogan.
"They [his opponents] have even called us Jews, Armenians and, pardon
the word, Greeks," Erdogan said in an interview in 2011.
According to Yilmaz, the use of the word "pardon" for any person or
people is not fair and he added that "a Muslim should not deviate
from justice."
From: Baghdasarian