In case you wonder how those "dissimilar" political entities had gotten together around the "table for six," here is another enigma for you: How is the oldest political party of Türkiye becoming a cat's paw in the hands of the PKK extension splinter groups?

In its first incarnation, in February 2022, the preelection grand coalition, the table for six, had dissimilar members, but at least they were (sort of) well-established parties. But now, for the March 31 local elections, the founder of the new "secret table," the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), is seeking support from an undeclared alliance with the Green Left Party (YSP), informally known as the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), a successor of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). In short, they all are pro-PKK parties that have had the kiss of life from CHP in the past election. Those pro-PKK groups could not survive in general elections because of the election threshold of 7% of total votes nationally.

One wonders why CHP fills the top row of its ballot slates with people from PKK-oriented groups. Is it only to increase the electability of its own candidates for the local municipality boards? In a way, yes, because its main rival, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), has had election alliances with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) for the last national and local elections, and mayors usually need an almost absolute majority to get elected in the metropolitan areas.

Unspoken rules of reciprocity

Yet, let alone getting larger electoral support, under the new management of the party's new chairperson, Özgür Özel, CHP is bleeding to death: large numbers of party members declared parting ways with the CHP; well-known mayors of important districts and towns withdrew their candidacy from CHP and threw their hat in the ring as independents. A major city candidate scandalized the party, declaring that if she gets elected, her doors will be open to the members of all parties (read: she will grease their palms), but the YSP people (read: PKK-affiliates) cannot get in!

Özel issued a correction, saying that the "esteemed candidate of ours had a slip of the tongue." However, the esteemed candidate scandalized the oldest party of Türkiye more, insisting that she meant what she said: the YSP party, the secret member of the alliance of CHP, cannot have even one member in the municipality palace. If you know the rules of "You scratch my back, I scratch yours" in local politics, you know what that esteemed mayoral candidate has in mind: No coddling your Qandil-appointed politicians.

I am aware that I am ahead of myself. First, let’s discuss the reasons for these election alliances since Jan. 19, 2020. Why "since Jan. 19, 2020" and not, say, Feb. 19, 2020? Because the United States' then-vice president Joseph Biden Jr., in his famous interview with the Editorial Board of the New York Times, titled "I ain’t dead and I’m not going to die" by the newspaper’s funny web editor, had said: "Yeah. I’ve spent a lot of time with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He is an autocrat. I think we should be taking a very different approach to him and making it clear that we support opposition leadership. This makes it clear that we are in a position where we have a way that has been working for a while to integrate the Kurdish population who wanted to participate in the process in their Parliament, etc. Because we have to speak out about what we, in fact, think is wrong. He has to pay the price ... I’m still of the view that if we were to engage more directly like I was doing with them, we can support those elements of the Turkish leadership that still exist and get more from them and embolden them to be able to take on and defeat Erdoğan ... He got blown out in Istanbul; he got blown out in his party. So what did we do next? We sat there and yielded. And the last thing I would’ve done is yield to him about the Kurds ... I had a couple of those meetings with him about the Kurds, and they did not clamp down at the time. We have to make it clear that if they’re looking to because Turkey doesn’t want to have to rely on Russia. They’ve had a bite out of that apple a long time ago. But they understood that we won’t continue to play with them like we have. So I am very concerned ... I’m very concerned about our airfields and access to them as well."

He said he wasn’t dead yet, but even in 2020, he was showing the effects of old age, forgetting what he was saying at the beginning of a sentence and having difficulty stringing two sentences together. So, let’s excuse the disconcerting references to Russians and apples and focus on Kurds!

We have to use quotation marks around the word "Kurds" because Biden and the plot of Neo-Conservatives he inherited from George W. Bush (Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, Elliott Abrams) only means dismemberment of Iraq, Türkiye, Syria and Iran and create a "Kurdistan" to shield Israel from the ills of extremism in general and of Iran, in particular. Since the "Kurds" in those countries are essential parts of the societal establishment and political system as partners, the only "Kurds" they could use are the groups that had long started a secessionist insurgency and armed terrorism. The PKK is the foremost blood-thirsty, off-the-shelf terror organization that money can buy to be used against Türkiye, Iraq and Syria. In Iran, ethnic Kurdish insurgency seems reconciled with the mullahs’ regime against other ethnic groups.

Biden's misleading claims

The fact that Biden bragged about in his interview that the U.S. tried to "integrate the Kurdish population who wanted to participate in the process in their Parliament" is utter nonsense because, at that time, 9 of the 19-member Cabinet consisted of ethnic Kurds (including the vice president) and almost one-third of the 450 members of Parliament were of Kurdish ethnicity. What Biden was trying to do was probably his behind-the-scenes efforts on behalf of the HDP, which was facing a shutdown of its activities and its chair, Selahattin Demirtaş, had been jailed, together with its former leader, for provoking protests that resulted in the death of more than 50 people.

The Constitutional Court of Türkiye (AYM) had rejected an appeal by the HDP at the time of Biden’s NYT interview. Biden refers to the AYM case to shut down the HDP when he says, "they did not clamp down on the Kurds at the time." He should know better: President Erdoğan, having his party subjected to such cases by the AYM, is against the clause in the Constitution that authorizes the high court to close political parties down in certain situations.

So, Mr. Biden was not going "just sit there and yield..." this time and he did "support those elements of the Turkish leadership that still exist and get more from them and embolden them to be able to take on and defeat Erdoğan." We, of course, do not know the intrigue of a U.S. president’s emboldening party leaders in foreign countries, but we are talking about a country with more than 50 coups and coup-like interventions in foreign countries (there is even a Wiki page about them!).

Biden could find a way to bring those dissimilar parties together and convince CHP to have secret alliances in big cities with the pro-PKK parties and groups and disgrace itself in the process. They say a camel is a horse designed by a committee. We say a wicked puppeteer pulls the strings and Turkish parties dance.