Zaher Baher
Interview with Beyond Europe about Turkey Election
1) Is there still a chance that Erdogan will not win the game? If so, who are his counterparts? What strategy do they pursue and what goals do they have? What is going to happen if the HDP exceeds 10 % and moves into parliament?
A: I believe Erdogan will win again but may be narrowly. Erdogan controlled everything in Turkey almost all the Media, the State’s administrations, the courts & jurisdiction system, the military section, the National Intelligence Organisation (MIT), the Parliament. In addition he has made Turkey as an open prison for its citizens, so all these in some way helps Erdogan to dominate the election campaign process, in other words people can hear mainly AKP campaign voice not the rest of the political parties and groups.
Probably HDP exceeds 10% threshold but no mulch chance for HDP to make big changes because of its experiences we saw it previously in the Parliament so what do you think under the presidential system?!
I also must say the role that whole the political parties including HDP play is to make the mass movement weaken by deceiving people and giving impression that the real problems the society in Turkey currently is facing can be resolve through the election and Parliamentary System. We all know wherever the political parties are strong, the mass movement becomes weak and vice versa.
2) Can you describe the current situation of the Kurdish people in North-Kurdistan? What will happen here if Erdogan wins?
A: Well, the situation in Bakur, North-Kurdistan, is much worse than the years of 1990s in every way. I have mentioned this in my articles that published in Lib-Com and Anarchismo.
What was left over from 1990s intact, after imposing the war on Kurdish there in July 2015 by Erdogan almost completely destroyed. In addition Erdogan managed to weekend the mass movement there too.
If Erdogan wins or not, his AKP’s MPs work on paralysing and destroying the mass movement in Turkey in whole. It is in Erdogan and his party interest to replace the mass battle by party political battle. He is very clever politician and knows very well what makes the Turkish establishment weak is not the party political game and the parliamentary system, it is in fact the people’s movement, the working class movement. All his efforts now concentrating on deceiving people and diverting them from the right way of struggle there against the State of Turkey to Parliamentary system game.
3) What impact will an AKP election victory have on the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria and the situation in the Middle East? Can the idea of Rojava survive a Turkish autocratic state?
A: I do not thinks the policies of AKP, if Erdogan wins, will be changed to better. We all know Erdogan’s ambitious are very big as he tries to bring back the role of old Ottoman Empire to play a major role in Middle East and whole Europe as well.
He is very arrogant guy. Every time when he has succeeded in his Political career that made him more ambitious and more persistent on implementing his polices. He is now more dictator and more brutal than ever.
Erdogan since has been in power he has done everything to fail Rojava. I do not think when he wins again, he can be better. He probably will be worse because he thinks he has a mandate from people elected him again.
He is an evil man like the rest of the politicians so that he compromises with evil to defeat Rojava , his political history for the last two and a half years proved that.
As for Middle East, Erdogan tries to be a main leader, he tries to give an impression he is the voice of the voiceless, the voice of all Sunna Muslim, the voice of the Philistines and the voice of peace and security in the region.
In relation to Rojava, it is very hard to expect the idea of Rojava as claiming of Democratic Confedralism can be survived in a long term because of so many reasons. The special circumstances Rojava has, surrounding by the different enemies, lack of international solidarity, controlling the political, social and economic arena by PYD and the serious mistakes have PYD made, all these are few factors among many that have aborted the Tev-Dem movement’s initial aims . I have stressed on this point in my article Afrin and the policies of the Democratic Union Party.