Turkey's Kurds demand greater say after election
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Zeki Suleymanoglu, a Kurdish building contractor working in northern Iraq, has come home to Turkey to vote in Sunday's parliamentary elections in which he says the stakes couldn't be higher.
"This is the last chance for Turks and Kurds to live together in peace and brotherhood. If not, we will draw our own border lines," he said, casting his ballot in Diyarbakir, the biggest city of Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.
Rising violence in the region between the Turkish military and separatist militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been a dominant theme of an election that may see pro-Kurd candidates in the assembly for the first time in over a decade.
Kurds hope that by taking their battle for more cultural and political rights to parliament they can halt the violence.
"We have to stop the war, and we can only stop the fighting by solving the Kurdish problem," said Selahattin Demirtas, one of Diyarbakir's four independent candidates.
"If we can solve that problem and war ends, then employment and investment will rise in the city."
By standing as independents, members of Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), aim to circumvent the high 10 percent national threshold for parties to enter parliament.
As independents, they can be elected on a purely regional basis. The DTP is the most popular party in the southeast.
The elections are expected to bring up to 30 independent candidates into Turkey's 550-member parliament.
Kurds, up to 15 million of Turkey's 74 million people, want to be able to study their Kurdish language in state schools and want public servants in the region, including doctors and policemen, to be required to speak it.
Emotions are running high among frustrated voters who want more ethnic rights and an end to violence.
"We want peace, let the bloodshed stop, The youth of this country, both Turk and Kurds are dying for nothing," said Nuriye Tari in Kurdish after voting for an independent candidate.
The PKK launched its armed struggle in 1984 for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict and the violence has increased over the past year after a relative lull.
More than 200 Turkish soldiers have died since January, boosting public support in Turkey for nationalist parties demanding a tougher crackdown on Kurdish separatism.
Unemployment in the province of Diyarbakir is more than 30 percent. The literacy rate in the region is not known, but is estimated at not much more than 50 percent.
The independent candidates could steal votes from Turkey's ruling centre-right AK Party, which won eight seats from Diyarbakir province in the last general election in 2002.
The AK Party is expected to come first nationally in the election and to form the next government.
