International Business Times UK
Erkan Saka, who teaches at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, said Demirtas is key to HDP’s grassroots campaigning that attracted many volunteers all across the country. “He’s a good communicator, sometimes I think of him as Erdogan in his early years but ..
Three days before the Turkish parliamentary elections the human rights organisation Reporters Without Borders has called on President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to stop harassing opposition media. The fate of the country’s democracy is at stake, commentators point out, and hope the left-leaning pro-Kurdish HDP will make it into parliament.
President Erdoğan’s ego might not only harm the AKP in the long run, but also squander the Islamo-pragmatic political culture it was able to construct in the past 13 years.
Rally against women homicides in Istanbul. Photo by Nazlı Yırtar.
As Turkey heads toward a tense general election on June 7, the country’s EU accession negotiations—the process by which Turkey will gain admission to the European Union—hang in the balance. Last month the European Parliament postponed voting on Turkey’s 2014 progress report until June, overrunning the May 21 deadline. Kati Piri, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for Turkey, said the delay was due to the lack of time to discuss the amendments, but many believe the decision has more to do with the uncertain political environment in the country ahead of Sunday’s vote.
Erdoğan’s signature speech act is reciting poems; whereas Demirtaş excites his crowds by singing.
Demirtas with his family. During the campaign for Turkey’s first popularly elected ‘Head of the Republic’, we wrote a piece declaring the winner to be “populism”. Turkey will have parliamentary elections tomorrow on June 7 and here is an update on what has changed under this heading since last August.
