Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's hopes of cementing his one-man rule come down to how well he's sowed divisions among Kurds.
With several polls suggesting he'll lose his parliamentary majority on June 24 and be forced into a runoff presidential ballot, Erdogan has a lot riding on the millions of them he's tried to turn against the pro-Kurdish HDP party leader, Selahattin Demirtas, who was jailed in 2016.
Problem is, for as many hearts as Erdogan has won among religious Kurds who like that he's put Islam at the core of national life after decades of secularism, there are enemies determined to bring him down.
“The Kurds opposing Erdogan want to settle scores with him at the ballot box,” Murat Baykan, an HDP politician, said late last month at a party headquarters in the Mediterranean port city of Mersin, home to hundreds of thousands of Kurdish migrants.
He'd just returned from addressing a cheering crowd of supporters gathered at a playground, eager to hear the latest word from Demirtas, who's facing more than a dozen charges from inciting hatred to terrorism. "Our support can't be taken for granted. The candidate facing off against Erdogan in the run-off vote will depend on it,” Baykan said.
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