President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday was in Diyarbakır, a predominantly Kurdish province in southeastern Türkiye. One of the biggest cities in the region, it also has been a stronghold of a party linked to the PKK terrorist group.
Erdoğan’s speech at the election rally ahead of Sunday’s municipal elections sought to dissuade voters from what he called a "monopoly" of the terrorist group. He listed the achievements of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) for Diyarbakır, from health care services to post-earthquake recovery efforts while comparing what the opposition did for Diyarbakır.
The president hit out the alliances of the pro-PKK Green Left Party (YSP), informally known as the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), a successor of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). "It is worth thinking about how the candidate of the CHP won 71% of the vote here (in the 2023 presidential election)," Erdoğan told the crowd.
"You see how they drove the public will in Diyarbakır to support the CHP," he said in the rally in the city where the YSP, then known as the HDP, secured more than 62% of the vote in the 2019 elections, compared to the AK Party’s 30.9%.
The YSP rallied its voters for CHP candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in last year’s presidential elections, but Erdoğan, though in a runoff, secured another term anyway. Kılıçdaroğlu, meanwhile, lost his seat as the CHP's chair. His successor Özgür Özel courted the YSP for municipal election alliance, though his alliance ambitions initially fell apart when the YSP fielded its own candidates. Yet, the party signaled that they could have what they called "urban consensus" to support CHP candidates in certain places where the opposition party has a higher chance.
"They established a dirty alliance. You see how they carry suitcases of cash. You wonder what is the source of the money," he said.
Erdoğan was referring to a leaked video of CHP officials counting heaps of cash in an office, allegedly used to "buy" delegates to support the current chair of the party.
"DEM (YSP) has nothing but your votes. They took hostage the will of my Kurdish brothers and sisters. They don’t care about serving people. They are now bargaining (with the CHP) for their own personal interests. They pledged to save you from what they called serfdom, feudalism, state oppression. They deceived people with lies about 'democracy' and grabbed your votes. But Diyarbakır saw nothing of service, except in the era of the AK Party," he said, as he screened a video of government projects in Diyarbakır, from hospitals to new roads.
He stressed how his government eradicated PKK terrorism, while terrorists linked to the YSP ruined Sur, the historic citadel of Diyarbakır.
"They were planting roadside bombs while we were paving new roads," he said.
In the aftermath of last May’s general elections, which Erdoğan and his ruling People’s Alliance won against a six-party opposition bloc, municipal elections on March 31 look set to be a test of popular support for all competing sides. The party, which has more than 11 million members nationwide, is aiming to concentrate its program on strategically key provinces, particularly by assigning small groups to make house calls to establish face-to-face communication.
More than 61 million people are eligible to vote, and 1 million young voters will cast their ballots for the first time in this election. More than 50% of the voters are women, while men make up 49.1% of the electorate, according to the statistics. More than 3.3 million of voters are aged 75 and above. Most of the electorate is concentrated within 30 big cities, while more than 13.5 million voters will cast their ballots in 51 other cities.
Voters in opposition-run municipalities mostly complain about the lack of municipal services, such as problems in water utilities that lead to frequent water outages and traffic issues stemming from troubles in road construction and improvement of existing roads.