Election Day in Diyarbakır

The much anticipated Turkish election has come and gone, meaning of course, that the true work can now begin --- that is, by ordinary Turks as they sit for hours on small wooden chairs in dusty back alleys discussing the problems of the country over a cheap cigarette and an oversweetened tea.

The July 22nd election was watched with interest around the world and --- as if I were participating in some sort of sporting festival -- I decided to come to the place that was likely to provide the most ''action'': Diyarbakır.

Two months before ballots were cast, the election was a foregone conclusion for all intents and purposes: The AK Parti (The Justice and Development Party) would win another parliamentary majority, the CHP (Republican People's Party) would finish second, while the MHP (Nationalist Action Party) was projected to reenter parliament after a five year absence. Yesterday's results were more or less spot on: The AK Parti, criticized by the secular camp for its perceived hidden Islamic agenda, actually increased its share of the vote and ended the day as the only party with support in all parts of Turkey. The formerly leftist CHP and the ultra right wing MHP, for all their bluster, advertising, and catchy folk tunes, failed to prevent another AK Parti majority.

But while these parties' numbers were never in doubt, interesting things were happening in the East. The nation's Kurds, who form an ethnic majority in the South East, have been continuing a long struggle against the Ankara authorities in an attempt to receive what they believe to be equal rights. The war between the government and the PKK (Workers' Party of Kurdistan) has claimed tens of thousands of lives throughout 20 years of intermittent warfare. Having sensed that violent struggle was not producing the desired results, many intellectual Kurds attempted to change Turkish law through parliamentary means. These parliamentarily inclined Kurds, for all their non-violent intentions were rewarded with extended jail sentences when they first entered parliament in the early '90's.

Thankfully, the state of fear and police presence is no longer as omnipresent in the country's South East. Kurdish is freely spoken on the street (I have had the same conversation in Kurdish close to 187 times in the past two days -- a conversation that usually consists of

Stefan: ''çawni, ti başi?'' (How are you?)
Respondent: ''Bale, ez başım, gelliki spas. Ti başı?'' (Fine, thanks, and you?)
Stefan: ''Gelliki spas, ez başım...'' (I'm fine thanks)

before my Kurdish runs out of steam, but not without roars of approval from the assembled Kurdish constituents delighted to fear a foreigner speaking Kurdish (the more politically inclined ones near keel over when I break out my Kurdish political slogans (of the three or four that I know))), and Kurdish based political parties are more or less tolerated.

But despite this tolerance, the Kurdish based party, the DTP (Democratic Society Party) had a problem: Turkish electoral law prevents any party that does not win 10% of the national vote from entering parliament. To counter this measure, the DTP ran scores of ''independent'' candidates in the South East, plus Istanbul and other centres with migrant Kurdish populations. Rather optimistically conducted surveys informed the dubious public that 35-40 candidates might be elected in this fashion.

In truth, the question of how many ''independent'' DTPers would bring their cause to Ankara was the election's only real variable: Would religiously minded Kurds in the conservative South East support the leftist DTP? Would the army ''encourage'' South Eastern villagers NOT to vote DTP a bit too ''strongly'' in areas out of reach by the mainstream media and human rights groups? Would the DTPers gain enough votes in the big Western cities to pad their numbers in parliament? In the end, the DTP managed to elect 24 members to parliament, a low total considering the optimism of some predictions, but still a message to the Turkish establishment nonetheless.

In Diyarbakır, long a centre of Kurdish resistance to Turkish state authority, half the inhabitants supported the DTP. While this pleased many, there was no euphoria at only 24 candidates being elected to parliament.

I had come to Diyabakır in the hopes of witnessing some ''euphoria'', but I had to instead settle for some of the relative ''excitement'' (read privilege only granted to a foreigner whom no autority knows what to do with) of being the only non-authorized person allowed to observe all 8 hours of voting at the local primary school.

My entrance (duly completed with about 37 conversations consisting of how are you? etc. in Kurdish to the duly accompanying applause) to the school evaded the rather robust police presence (perhaps they just didn't care), although my entrance to the polling station did raise a few eyebrows. Every manner of Turkish citizen was being immediately removed from lingering in the polling room a nanosecond too long, but the novelty of having a Canadian come to watch the Turkish national election evidently provided enough of a diversion for the assembled officials that my presence was tolerated --- for 8 hours in the boiling hot classroom (it's not that I needed to be there for 8 hours to sample the full ''taste'' of the election --- but the oppressive Diyarbakırlı 46 C day made all forms of motion next to impossible).

Unfortunately, hospitality did not extend to being given permission to film anything that moved (although in true Middle Eastern fashion, the officiant said that if I could avoid getting caught by the police I was more or less aloud to do as I pleased), but the chance to watch illiterate village women, adorned in the most Kurdish of Kurdish headscarves, give thumbprints instead of a signature because they couldn't write, to watch ancient women, covered under layers and layers of black sheets out of a
concern for Islamic modesty, stagger with extraordinary slowness to cast their ballot, to watch the men bedecked in şalwar kameez, sporting the rather Middle Eastern-obligatory-three-day-growth beard give the Kurdish national salute as they cast their ballot -- all the while staring at me with the most piercing of blue-eyed stares --- was a chance at watching a polling of the people's voice that wouldn't quite be the same if one were to hang out at a polling station for 8 hours in Langley.

While I've decided that sitting in the inferno that is a Turkish classroom in the height of summer for eight hours is not an activity I am going to repeat with regularity, at no other time could one hope to see the inhabitants of an entire neighbourhood pass before one's eyes as if on parade...

















A typical example of a local constituent












The election over, everyone turns to the TV to wait for the results... And since only the truly mad would stay inside during the Diyarbakır dust, when in Diyarbakır, one waits for the results on the terrace accompanied by watermelon...