DİHA - Dicle News Agency

MELTEM OKTAY / SELMAN ÇİÇEK

VAN (DİHA) – Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) General Co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ held her first rally in Van for her campaign for Parliament in the province. Yüksekdağ, speaking with DİHA, said the HDP's project of "new life" aims to be a summary of all the people's of Turkey.

Yüksekdağ says her party's diverse 550 candidate-strong Parliamentary list has been a long time coming, after the peoples of Turkey have been forced to live with war, repression and exploitation for years. The HDP is running as a party for the first time in its history, a big wager in a country with Europe's highest electoral threshold, at 10%, which keeps many opposition parties out of Parliament.

'No party list has diversity of HDP'

"Since the first day it was founded, the HDP has actually been organizing hope for all the peoples of Turkey," she said. "But people were still curious about the candidates we would run in this election. Now that our 550-candidate list has been revealed, it's obvious that this wasn't a naïve hope. No party list has the diversity of the HDP list." Yüksekdağ says the party has no intention of letting the AKP continue its politics.

'We have confirmed beauty of mosaic'

"Until now, they forced the people of Turkey to be as austere and homogeneous as marble," she said. "But we have confirmed the beauty of the mosaic here. They thought that with this election, they could take control of all the peoples of Turkey. But we, as the oppressed, stood up and said we would not hand ourselves over. Now the oppressed are a force that can change the political regime in Turkey."

Yüksekdağ noted that the party is running 268 women candidates—or 48% of its parliamentary list. She said the policy is aimed to make gender parity in political representation a reality in Turkey. The HDP has always emphasized gender parity as a basic principle of the party, with a co-chair system in which positions like mayorships are shared by a man and a woman.

'Women are central in HDP'

"We've put women, and their strength in the struggle for their freedom and a new life, in the position of subjects in the struggle for social liberation," she said. "If today in Turkey everyone is astonished by the HDP's surprising rise, if everyone is finally becoming acquainted with the HDP as an option, you can be sure that this is because women are central in the HDP." She called women's leadership role as the key force that would change Turkey.

The party is expecting a difficult period in front of them, but Yüksekdağ says she is excited to be running as the candidate from Van. She said that people of Van could be certain that this would begin a period of new victories for the province, no matter what attempts are made to stop the party's rise.

"But I trust the people of Van," she said. "This is a people who have succeeded with their honorable, proud political stance in bringing down malice and misfortune.

'We can beat electoral threshold together'

"Our backs are strong," she said, "and so are those of the people of Van. When we put together two forces like this, there is nothing that can stop our success. We can beat the [electoral] threshold with this. And the system will be buried in the ruins of that threshold."

(cm/nt)