Grab your pitchforks and torches, you will reach your target

On Sept. 8, Turkey survived what could easily have been one of the darkest dates in the country?s history.

Thousands of people across the country attacked Peoples? Democratic Party (HDP) buildings - including its headquarters in Ankara, which was targeted by an arson attempt - homes, workplaces and the daily Hürriyet building in Istanbul, in which the Hürriyet Daily News is also located - the second physical attack on the building in 48 hours.

According to HDP officials, 128 of the party?s offices were damaged during the attacks. Some of them, including the local office in the popular resort town of Alanya, were torched. The mobs also attacked several workplaces in resort towns Manavgat and Side, setting a restaurant on fire because ?it did not have a Turkish flag in its window.?

The mobs got together upon a call from the far-right ?Idealist Hearths? (Ülkü Ocaklar?), which has close links with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), to protest the recent terror attacks on Turkish security forces by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers? Party (PKK). The call was endorsed by high-level MHP officials, who have been portraying the HDP as an extension of the PKK. President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu and Justice and Development Party (AKP) officials have also been blaming the HDP for the spiraling violence which has claimed more than 100 lives in the last two months. 

So it was no surprise that the mobs targeted the HDP buildings, and also anyone who they thought was Kurdish. In the western province of Burdur, they even beat up a local man, who was in fact a Turkish nationalist, ?because he looked like a terrorist.?

While the anger against the HDP is being fueled by many on both the right and left sides of the...