ISTANBUL - İHD Co-Chair Eren Keskin, who said that the Kurds were the most organized in the elections, said that the results were not a victory for the government.

 

President of the People's Alliance, AKP Chairperson Tayyip Erdoğan, who built his election campaign on repression, could not go beyond nationalist and racist rhetoric in the squares. The fact that Erdoğan, who won the elections, continued his nationalist rhetoric in his "balcony" speech, was a sign that the People's Alliance would follow a polarizing policy in the new period as well.

 

Lawyer Eren Keskin, Co-Chair of the Human Rights Association (İHD), evaluated both the election results and the nationalist and racist rhetoric carried out in the form of campaigns in the elections.

 

'THE LEVEL OF RACISM IS DANGEROUS'

 

Stating that Erdoğan was conducting a nationalist, discriminatory and marginalizing election campaign in the May 28 Presidential elections, as he did in almost all elections, Keskin said: "The AKP and MHP government has for many years covered the state with a totalitarian state structure. The people who are exposed to these policies increasingly resemble those who run the state. When Erdogan was re-elected as President, a popular form accustomed to the 'leader' emerged. The millions of voters who adopted these rhetoric and it is the response of racism as very dangerous at the current stage. The level of racism is dangerous. All political parties, except the Labor and Freedom Alliance, use a nationalist and racist language, especially the political parties within the Nation Alliance embraced racism and nationalism more in the second round elections. The basis of these policies is the Syrian refugees in the country."

 

ELECTIONAL RACE WAS NOT FAIR

 

Expressing that the elections were not conducted under fair and equal conditions, Keskin said: “No ministers resigned during this process, so the ministries competed unequally by using all the means of the state. In many places, there were attacks against the members and administrators of the Greens and the Left Future Party (Green Left Party). I think there was all of the cheating and vote shifts in the election."

 

KURDS ACTED THE MOST ORGANIZED IN THE ELECTION

 

Pointing out that the AKP government lost the metropolitan and Kurdistan cities in these elections, Keskin said: This election result was not a victory for the AKP-MHP. The Kurds made a very difficult decision in this election. As a nation that had suffered too much from the founding ideology of the republic, the Kurds voted for a Kemalist leader to represent a founding ideology. Kurds voted for Kılıçdaroğlu for using the language he developed for democratization steps. Again, the Kurds were the ones who acted in the most organized way in this regard. The result of the election frankly did not surprise me. What happens next? We are living in the most unpredictable period in this geography. Tayyip Erdogan is a very pragmatic person. He can think about it tomorrow and make another decision. Turkey's economy is in a very difficult situation. Without Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Turkey's economy is in shambles. It is known that foreign capital will not come without democratization. They will necessarily take a democratization step. But how they will do this by using such racist and nationalist rhetoric is a different matter.”

 

THE PROCESS WAITING FOR WOMEN

 

Referring to the picture created by the political parties in the Parliament after the elections, Keskin said: "The presence of some political parties in the Parliament poses a danger to the women's struggle. HÜDA PAR, which advocates for women to stay at home and joins the alliance of the government for this, has a mentality of keeping women at home and owning them. The Commonwealth of Nations has a similar structure. Against this attitude of the government, I think that the Kurdish women's movement and the feminist women's movement are very strong in this country despite everything. In addition, Türkiye is a country that has signed many international conventions. We are constantly calling for Turkey to comply with these international conventions, and we will do so in the future.”