Kurds in Turkey

Election posters of Turkish presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the opposition Republican People's Party, in Istanbul, 25 May 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/ERDEM SAHIN

"If there is no change at the ballot box, it will be a disaster in the economy and democracy," Demirtas wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli on Oct. 5 rejected any debate on the Kurdish issue and reiterated his argument that "there is no Kurdish problem" in Turkey.

"To discuss the so-called Kurdish issue means to discussing the nation. Discussing the nation is synonymous with opening the state for discussion," he said at the MHP's parliament group meeting.

Turkey's fundamental problems are aggravating as the political mechanism of the state is falling short of making adequate efforts to resolve the issues such as education and the Kurdish question, the leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has said.

A 10-year-old Turkish boy in the Central Anatolian province of Aksaray has been taken under state custody after accidentally killing his grandmother. 

"We will announce the name of our presidential candidate on May 4," co-chair of the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), Sezai Temelli said on April 30.

The Kurdish problem-focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) has called for an emergency provincial leaders' meeting in Ankara on April 18 in the wake of calls for an early election. 

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is the government that has come closest to solving Turkey's Kurdish problem. It is also the government that has helped bring the prospect of an "independent Kurdish state" closest to reality, though obviously this is an unintended consequence of its mistaken policies.

Before denouncing the EU as an "alliance of crusaders" that keeps "lying to Turkey" on April 2 in Ankara, President Tayyip Erdoğan was in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır on April 1 as a part of his "Yes" campaign for the April 16 on shifting the country to an executive presidential system. 

Within the span of just a week, two terror attacks have killed dozens of police, soldiers and civilians, first in central Istanbul and then in Kayseri. The blast in Istanbul felt like an earthquake in my flat, which is located just a 10-minute walk from the site of the explosions.

We have the usual slew of condemnations and condolences from Europe after the twin bombings in Istanbul by a group attached to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which left 36 policemen and eight ordinary citizens, almost all of them young people, dead and 155 injured.