70 percent of HDP supporters want the party to remain in parliament

Duvar English

In a poll conducted by the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) surveying its own supporters, results indicate that 70 percent of respondents said that they wanted the party to stay in parliament, amid debates about abandoning it in protest of the government's removal of numerous recently-elected HDP mayors from their posts.

10 percent of those polled supported withdrawing from parliament in what is referred to as “sine-i millet”, in which a party leaves parliament and joins together with its public supporters to struggle against the government. 

28 mayors selected from the HDP in the March elections of this year have been stripped from their posts by the government and replaced by appointed trustee mayors handpicked by the state. The government accuses these mayors of terror charges, but critics argue that it is an attempt to destroy the party. During the extended state of emergency period that followed the July 2016 coup attempt, dozens of HDP mayors elected in 2014 were removed from their posts in a similar fashion. 

The removal of the mayors has led to a debate among party supporters as to whether or not the HDP should abandon parliament in protest of the government's practice of sacking their democratically-elected mayors. 

In a statement, the HDP announced that it would not be leaving its parliamentary seats, though it did call for early elections. The next general and presidential elections are scheduled for 2023, while the HDP called for them to held in 2021. 

Jailed Demirtaş supports call for early elections

Jailed former HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş said that he supported the HDP's call for early elections as a first step, adding that the party now has to work to establish the principles and alliances with which it will enter the potential early election.

Demirtaş has been behind bars for three years on a variety of charges that supporters say are revenge for Demirtaş vowing in 2015 to not allow President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to become president and establish his much-touted executive presidential system, which was narrowly passed in a referendum in 2017