ON October 10, two large bombs exploded at a peaceful political rally in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. The rally had been called by two of the most prominent trade unions in the country – KESK and DISK – under the banner, “Labour, Peace and Democracy.” KESK is a large union of public sector workers and DISK is propelled to the Left by the presence of activists who went into its ranks when the Left parties faced repression from the State in 1971 and 1980. Both trade unions are committed to peace talks between the State and the Kurdish resistance (notably the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK).

News had already leaked out that the PKK and the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK) – the political wing of the PKK – had formulated plans for a ceasefire with the State. Harsh violence in south-eastern Turkey between the government and the PKK had thrown the entire region into a state of emergency. The peaceful rally was met with violence. Over a hundred people died, and over six hundred remain in critical condition. It is one of the largest terrorist acts in contemporary Turkish history.

ELECTIONS

Calls for a ceasefire certainly drove the rally, but it was not the only issue.

On November 1, Turkey’s population will return to the ballot box. In June, the party of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – the Justice and Development Party (AKP) – found itself with just over forty percent of the vote. It won the election, but not with sufficient heft to allow it to alter the Constitution. Erdoğan wants to change the Constitution to give him, as president, extensive powers. The parliament has been a hindrance to his ambitions. He wants more. A government could not be formed, since none of the parties wanted to ally with Erdoğan’s AKP and to do its bidding. Therefore, a new election is to be held in November.

Why had Erdoğan’s AKP not been able to win a majority in June? Largely because of the gains made by the Left-wing People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The failures of Erdoğan’s Kurdish policy and Syria policy lost him votes to the MHP and gained votes for the HDP from the more conventional Republican Party. In anticipation of the re-vote, Erdoğan has gone after the MHP voters with a hard-right attack on minorities and with a hard-nosed push against any dissent in the country. In September, the fascist Grey Wolves burnt down the offices of the HDP in Ankara as the government arrested editors and reporters. This two-pronged approach allowed Erdoğan’s party to push back against the MHP and the HDP at the same time. The atmosphere in Turkey is corrosive as a result of the violence unleashed by the government and its allies.

THE KURDISH

QUESTION

In the 1990s, the PKK had come to understand that an armed victory against the State was not possible. Demographic changes had made it difficult to imagine a contiguous Kurdish State within or without the boundaries of Turkey. Massive migration of Kurdish families from their eastern homelands to the rest of Turkey had been a product of the horrible war from 1984 to 1999. Istanbul is now the city in Turkey with the largest Kurdish population. A different solution to the Kurdish Question was necessary.

The main path would now be to fight for rights within Turkey rather than for national self-determination. Parties emerged to carry this above ground strategy forward – HEP, DEP, HADEP, DEHAP, DTH, DTP, BDP, and the DBP. The common word in the names of these parties is Democratic. The leadership of the Kurdish parties understood that being the party of the Kurdish people was not sufficient to win political power. They would need to ally with someone. The most obvious ally for the Kurdish political movement was the Turkish left, whose smaller parties had been committed to the Kurdish cause but who could not win power on their own. The alliance between the Kurdish political parties and the Turkish Left produced the HDP in 2012.

The co-chairs of the HDP exemplify the two wings of the party - Selahattin Demirtaş comes from the Kurdish parties, while Figen Yüksekdağ comes from the Marxist-Leninist parties. They have been able to draw upon the peace bloc, the trade union movement, the people disenchanted with increased authoritarianism in Turkey and the animosity to Erdoğan (Qatil Erdoğan - Murderer Erdoğan, says a prominent slogan). The rally on October 10 called by the two Left-leaning unions drew together various Kurdish groups and peace groups. This is the constituency of the HDP. The plea for a ceasefire between the State and the PKK is rooted in the HDP’s ethos. The current permanent curfew in south-eastern Turkey would make the November election impossible in areas that are likely to vote heavily for the HDP. If those voters stay away from the ballot box – because of the ongoing conflict – it would hurt the HDP’s chance of repeating or improving on its June verdict.

Just after the bombing, the PKK announced its call for a ceasefire. It came as the bodies lay sprawled on the square in Ankara. The government paid no attention to the ceasefire. Despite the horror of the bombing, Turkish jets continued to pummel PKK positions in south-east Turkey and across the border in Iraq (where the PKK has bases). “The PKK ceasefire means nothing for us,” a Turkish security official told Reuters. “The operations will continue without a break.”

REACTIONS

Nothing is easier for the Erdoğan government to do than to sow fear. Suggestions came from the government that the PKK might have done the bombing as part of some kind of disinformation campaign. This is entirely unlikely, merely fear-mongering for votes. Erdoğan’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, hastily attacked the HDP, and then clumsily banned the dissemination of any information on the Ankara bombing. Fear and repression are the coins of the AKP.

The security services began to arrest known ISIS militants and recruiters in Turkey. The government said that ISIS had conducted the bombing. This is not an unreasonable theory. ISIS has a cell known as the Dokumacılar, the weavers, who target the Kurdish militias. In June, two days before the elections, Dokumacılar struck an HDP rally in the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakır – killing four people and injuring many. That attack rallied people to the HDP. A month after the elections, Dokumacılar hit youth activists of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) in the town of Suruç. These activists were rallying to go to Kobane, in Syria, to help in the reconstruction of the town. It is important that the co-chair of the HDP, Figen Yüksekdağ, was a co-founder of the ESP. Thirty-three activists died in that bombing.

None of this seemed sufficient. HDP leader Demirtaş went to the KESK headquarters and made a public statement, pointing fingers directly at the government. “You haven’t made one arrest in relation to any of these attacks,” he said, “Neither Suruç, nor Diyarbakır. You won’t arrest the perpetrator of the Ankara bombing either.” The most poignant part of Demirtaş’ statement came when he spoke of the victims. “It is the sons and daughters of the poor.” There was no security for the rally, in the heart of a city controlled by the intelligence agency. When the dead and wounded lay on the square, the police fired tear gas and water cannons. “Is this your understanding of justice,” asked the HDP leader? Demirtaş said that the AKP of Davutoğlu is a “government by force. You staged a coup.” What is the antidote? “We won’t seek revenge. Violence will breed more violence. We’ll seek justice in the election of November 1.”

In Ankara, the day after the bombing, thousands of people took to the streets in protest. They were joined across Turkey, as crowds gathered to pay homage to the dead and to register their disgust with the government. Whether this will translate electorally is to be seen. It shows that the HDP has the mood of the people. Despite the ban on twitter, Demirtaş’ statement was on YouTube and was widely seen. His unalloyed anger came across in the tenor of the streets. “Shared life is possible among the oppressed and the abused,” he said. “We will not surrender to a bunch of scoundrels.”