By Burcu Ozcelik
FOREIGN AFFAIRS - May 4, 2015
For months now, Turkey’s main Kurdish Islamist party has been
criticizing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for excluding
it from ongoing peace talks between the government and Kurds. In
January, leaders of this party, the Free Cause Party (Huda-Par),
demanded to be recognized as a third group at the negotiating table,
alongside the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a secular
separatist group that the AKP considers a terrorist organization.
With its emphasis on Islam, Huda-Par will be a direct threat to the
AKP in elections this June, where it will compete with the Islamist AKP
against the secular socialist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) for
religiously conservative Kurds. Indeed, since lasting peace in the
country can be guaranteed only by an inclusive process, the government’s
decision to leave out Huda-Par can be read as an attempt to strong-arm
the process.
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