DIYARBAKIR – At least five people have been killed as Turks went to the polls in local elections likely to give the ruling AK Party a new mandate to press on with key reforms in the European Union candidate country.
The deaths took place yesterday in the mainly Kurdish southeast as rival supporters for non-party village chief posts clashed in several villages, security and hospital sources said. Nearly 100 people were wounded in the violence.
The southeast is one of the main battlegrounds of the elections because prime minister Tayyip Erdogan hopes to wrest the region from pro-Kurdish parties in what might prove a historic step towards solving a deadly conflict weighing heavily on the country’s economic and political development.
Voters in the predominantly Muslim country of 72 million people elect mayors and municipal and provincial assemblies, but the vote was seen more as a referendum on the popular Mr Erdogan.
The Islamist-rooted AK Party has won three consecutive elections since it first crushed secularists in 2002. Most opinion polls show it winning the local polls with about 40 per cent of the vote despite record unemployment and an economy hit by the global economic crisis, after years of high economic growth and record foreign investment.
Mr Erdogan has pledged to reform the constitution drafted by the military in 1982 and change the way the Constitutional Court works – steps which would remove some obstacles to EU membership but could revive tensions with secularists who accuse him of pursuing an Islamist agenda. Mr Erdogan denies this.
Campaigning had much of the atmosphere of a general election, rather than that of a local vote, with candidates trading accusations of corruption.
In a 2008 case that rattled financial markets and deeply polarised the country, Turkey’s top court almost closed down the AK Party, which is rooted in political Islam but also embraces nationalists and centre-right elements.
The IMF and Turkey have been in talks for months on a deal markets say is key to shielding the $750 billion economy from the global crisis. Markets expect Mr Erdogan to complete those talks after yesterday’s vote.
Mr Erdogan has courted Kurdish support in the impoverished southeast, where some 40,000 have died since 1984 in a conflict between separatists and the government. The AK Party hopes to supplant Kurdish parties in regional administrations. “I voted for the AK Party because they are the best for the country and best for the economy,” said Veysel Kaya (27), who runs a food store in Diyarbakir, the biggest city in the southeast. “Unemployment is very high here and there is a very young population and we need jobs and development.”
Turkey’s unemployment rate is at an all-time high of 13.6 per cent. The opposition has failed to capitalise on the crisis because it is not seen as a viable alternative.
Critics say Mr Erdogan has lost his reformist spirit since Turkey won EU accession talks in 2005.– (Reuters)