44 Europe The EconomistJune 9th 2018
H
UNDREDS of new apartment blocks
are rising from the rubble of Nusay-
bin, a city in Turkey’s Kurdish south-east.
The government is doing its best to con-
crete over the devastation. But traces of the
horrific clashes between the Turkish army
and insurgents of the Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK), which claimed thousands of
lives nationwide in 2015 and 2016, are easy
to find. A third of the city, including some
6,000 buildings, was destroyed byhelicop-
ters and tanks during the siege. Debris still
lines some of the streets. Bullet holes pep-
per outlying houses and the minaret of a
mosque. Only last October, workers un-
earthed another dead body. Few locals
speak openly of any of this. The fighting,
accompanied by a series ofPKKterror at-
tacks, has ended. But the fear persists.
On June 24th Turkey will hold snap
elections, and towns like Nusaybin may
determine the fate of the entire country.
Whether the opposition can wrest control
of parliament from the ruling Justice and
Development (AK) party, and the presiden-
cy from the strongman Recep Tayyip Erdo-
gan, depends largely on Kurdish votes.
The Kurds in Turkey number some 15m.
Those in the south-east, as well as secular
Kurds elsewhere, tend to vote for the Peo-
ples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a group also
backed by some leftists and liberals. Those
elsewhere, the children and grandchildren
of villagers displaced by war in the 1980s
and 1990s, many of them assimilated into
Turkish culture, have frequently votedAK,
as have some religious Kurds.
TheHDPis locked out of an alliance
formed by the rest of the opposition, so un-
der Turkey’s electoral rules it needs at least
10% of the vote to enter parliament. Unless
it does so, Mr Erdogan’sAKwill almost cer-
tainly retain its long-held majority. If the
HDPgets past the magic number, though,
parliament may be up for grabs. And that
could prompt a political showdown with a
re-elected President Erdogan.
The Kurdish vote may even prove deci-
sive in the presidential election, too. In the
first round, the vast majority of Kurds are
sure to vote for theHDP’s candidate, Sela-
hattin Demirtas, who has spent the past 19
months in prison, facing dozens of flimsy
“terror propaganda” charges and up to 142
years behind bars. Assuming the contest
goes to a run-off, as the polls suggest, they
and the rest of Turkey will probably end up
choosing between Mr Erdogan and the op-
position front-runner, Muharrem Ince, thecandidate of thesecular Republican Peo-
ple’s Party (CHP). Mr Erdogan remains the
favourite by a large but narrowing margin.
For the Kurds, the choice is not as
straightforward as it might seem. Some
continue to see Mr Erdogan as a symbol of
reform: the leader who made it easier for
them to use their own language and follow
their own customswithout being harassed
by the police. Others hope Mr Erdogan
might revive negotiations with thePKK,
which he launched a decade ago but dis-
owned in 2015. (That was when he un-
leashed the army against the insurgents
who had holed up in towns like Nusay-
bin.) Most Kurdish voters, however, no lon-
ger give him the benefit of the doubt, says
Vahap Coskun of Dicle University in Di-
yarbakir, the south-east’s largest city. Mr Er-
dogan himself has ruled out new peace
talks. Earlier this year, he launched an of-
fensive against Kurdish insurgents in Syr-
ia’s Afrin. Officials now suggest that a new
operation againstPKKbases in northern
Iraq is only a matter of time.
The government insists it is fighting ter-
ror. But its crackdown has respected few
boundaries. Some 95 Kurdish mayors have
been sacked and replaced by state appoin-
tees. Nearly 5,000HDPofficials and nine
MPs, including Mr Demirtas, as well as doz-
ens of Kurdish journalists, havebeen ar-
rested. Earlier this year, police detainedover 800 people for protesting against the
Afrin incursion. A Kurdish artist, Zehra Do-
gan, was sentenced in March 2017 to nearly
three years in prison for a painting of Nu-
saybin’s smouldering ruins in which she
depicted army vehicles as scorpions.
Just because they have tired of Mr Erdo-
gan does not mean Kurdish voters are sure
to back Mr Ince. Since the early 1990s,
when the CHP formed an alliance with
one of the HDP’s predecessors, the secular
opposition has done little to endear itself
to the Kurds, says Gonul Tol of the Middle
East Institute, a think-tank. Nationalists
within the party have long had the upper
hand over progressives, she adds.
But if any secular politician can make
inroads in the Kurdish south-east, it is the
affable Mr Ince. Unlike most of his col-
leagues, he opposed stripping Mr Demirtas
and otherHDP parliamentarians of their
immunity. He also made a point of visiting
the Kurdish leader in prison and called for
his release before the election. His party’s
manifesto now promises more autonomy
for local governments, a key Kurdish de-
mand. “Between him and Erdogan, people
here feel closer to Ince,” says Ferhat Kut, an
HDP official in Nusaybin.
For Mr Ince to have a chance in a run-off
against Mr Erdogan, he would probably
need a clear endorsement from Mr Demir-
tas. The Kurdish candidate will not en-
dorse anyone before the first round, but he
would plainly like to see the back of Mr Er-
dogan. Turkey is facing a choice between “a
democracy and a dictatorship”, he told The
Economistthrough his lawyers. For the
Kurds in particular, the past few years have
been a preview of the kind of regime Mr Er-
dogan has in mind, he adds. Mr Demirtas
refers to himself as a political hostage. He
might be a kingmaker soon. 7TurkeyThe Kurdish kingmaker
NUSAYBIN
An oppressed minority could decide whether Turkey’s strongman retains powerDemirtas: in jail, but on the campaign trail