SELAHATTİN DEMİRTAŞ

‘Next elections in Turkey will be between the good and evil’

Behind bars for over four years, former HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş has written an article for T24 news website: “The upcoming elections will not be among parties, identities or beliefs; they will be between the good and evil ones.”

İstanbul

‘Next elections in Turkey will be between the good and evil’

* Photo: Selahattin Demirtaş's Twitter account

Click to read the article in Turkish

Arrested in Edirne Prison in northwestern Turkey since November 2016, former Co-Chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtaş has penned an article for T24 news website.

In his article published today (February 22), Demirtaş has emphasized that "the next elections in Turkey will be between the good and evil."

Demirtaş has briefly said:

"...based on this, I can say this quite clearly: The upcoming elections will not be among political parties, identities or beliefs; they will be between the good and evil ones. If you are on the side of the good ones, then where you stand is certain; there is no need to be undecided.

"There is, more or less, good and evil in all parties. What I am talking about is this: Those on the side of 'the good' in all parties raise their voices and come together. They should stand side by side in panel discussions, TV programs, democratic demonstrations and events and they should force all political parties into forming an alliance of the good. Conceptually speaking, this can be called the 'democracy alliance.'

"By doing this, we should lead the society to make a real preference. We need to address the AK Party and its voters in this way."

'Let's test our goodness'

Against this backdrop, Selahattin Demirtaş has said, "Let us test our goodness a bit in the light of universal principles and with questions about today." He has then moved on to ask the following questions:

1) Does people's worth change in your eyes depending on whether they are Muslims, Christians, Jews, Ezidis, Syriacs, Alevis, Caferis, Shaafis, atheists, etc? (Please be careful; what I am asking is not whether you personally feel close to them or not.)

A) Yes B) No

2) Does people's worth change in your eyes depending on whether they are Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Circassians, Greeks, Bosnians, etc? (Please be careful again; what I am asking is not whether you personally feel close to them or not.)

A) Yes B) No

3) Does people's worth change in your eyes depending on whether they wear a headscarf or not or whether they have a beard, moustache, hat, cap, kippa, turban, baggy trousers, miniskirts or different sexual orientations? (Please be careful again; what I am asking is not whether you personally feel close to them or not.)

A) Yes B) No

4) Are you against all types of violence such as physical, sexual, psychological and economic violence against women?

A) Yes B) No

5) Are you against the exploitation of employees' labor, their employment in poor conditions and modern slavery?

A) Yes B) No

6) Are you against the destruction of nature and torment of animals?

A) Yes B) No

7) Are you against bribery, corruption, favoritism and extravagance etc. anf against the transfer of state resources to a couple of pro-government contractors?

A) Yes B) No

8) Are you against the appointment of people based on whether they are pro-government or not, rather than whether they deserve it or not?

A) Yes B) No

9) Are you against injustice and subordination of courts by politics?

A) Yes B) No

10) Are you against the fact that the media carries out perception operations with news full of slanders and insults, pockets billions by lynching innocent people and praises poverty and that the media has been almost entirely under the control of the government?

A) Yes B) No

11) Are you against "not solving" the problems with guns and violence while they can be solved by talking?

A) Yes B) No

12) Are you against the state being governed by a single person?

A) Yes B) No

(DŞ/SD)