Global Courant 2023-05-12 17:51:05
Istanbul, Turkey – The campaign leading up to this weekend’s Turkish elections was marred by outbreaks of violence across the country.
Incidents of stone-throwing, physical attacks on election workers and gunmen targeting party offices have all been recorded in recent weeks as Turkey heads for razor-sharp polls as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks to extend his 20-year rule.
There are also concerns that political rhetoric at election rallies could fuel violence. Devlet Bahceli, head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) that supports the government, over the weekend denounced the opposition as “traitors (who) will receive life sentences or bullets in their bodies”.
However, in Turkey’s highly polarized political landscape, claims and counter-claims obscure the facts surrounding incidents.
Savci Sayan, a parliamentary candidate for Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in Izmir, western Turkey, said his campaign bus was attacked by opposition supporters on Monday night.
He said the windows of the bus were smashed and one of his advisers suffered a head injury when he was hit by a rock as the bus passed a cafe that had posters in support of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which is strongly supported in Izmir.
“They insulted our esteemed president and me, broke the window of our bus, broke my adviser’s head,” Sayan said. “My adviser’s friends and the police narrowly rescued him.”
However, Sevda Erdan Kilic, a CHP parliamentarian for Izmir, claimed that it was Sayan and his supporters who attacked the cafe. “Savci Sayan and a group of about 30 people attacked a coffee house with him,” she said.
Her claim was disputed by Sayan. “Why do we attack when we come back from work in the middle of the night?” he said, adding that despite “provocations … we have always been silent for the security and peace of our country.”
Imamoglu attack
The most serious incident occurred on Sunday when CHP’s Ekrem Imamoglu addressed crowds from the roof of his campaign bus in Erzurum, an eastern city that supported the AK Party in recent votes.
Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, who has been named as one of several vice presidents if the opposition wins, was stoned from behind the bus. Footage showed his team holding up umbrellas to protect him from the missiles before he was taken away.
Seventeen people required medical treatment and the opposition condemned what they called the police’s failure to intervene in the attack. About two dozen suspects were detained and later released pending investigation.
Although there were no fatal attacks during the campaign, the use of firearms is a cause for concern in a country where gun ownership, whether legal or illegal, is relatively common.
Last month, a man opened fire at an AK Party office in Cukurova, southern Adana province, with an automatic rifle. The building was empty after being evacuated after the earthquakes in February. There have been similar armed attacks on the offices of most political parties across the country.
A bloody past
The fear of political violence is very real in Turkey, where many remember the late 1970s when thousands were murdered by political gangs. The bloodshed ended after a military coup in 1980, but resurfaced when the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) launched its armed campaign against the Turkish state in 1984. Nearly 40,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died in that conflict.
Ahead of the June 2015 elections, a bomb attack on a pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) rally in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, left at least four dead and hundreds injured.
Three years ago, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, now the main opposition candidate to Erdogan, was attacked by a mob while attending the funeral of a soldier in Ankara province. He was beaten and forced to take cover in a nearby house as the mob shouted, “Burn them, kill them.”
Erdogan also came close to death in a 2016 coup attempt that left more than 280 dead when rogue commandos stormed his holiday hotel in southwestern Turkey.
Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast has largely voted for the HDP (Al Jazeera)
Deniz Poyraz, a 38-year-old Kurdish woman, was shot dead in 2021 when a gunman allegedly with ultra-nationalist sympathies attacked the HDP’s office in Izmir.
Violence has also broken out at polling stations outside Turkey during this campaign. About 1.8 million Turks living abroad cast their ballots in the two weeks leading up to Tuesday.
In France, clashes erupted between rival voters at a polling station in Marseille, with police firing tear gas and hospitalizing four people. Meanwhile, Dutch riot police were called to a brawl at a polling station in Amsterdam.
Kilicdaroglu, who heads the CHP and is a candidate for a six-party opposition alliance, feared more violence and urged his supporters to stay home in case of victory.
“If we win on election night, no one will be allowed to take to the streets,” he said in a television interview last week. “Everyone should sit at home… Some people may come to cause provocation. Unknown armed people can take to the streets. We need to create an environment where this is not possible.”
