Prime Minister Binali Yildirim met Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party (CHP), on Monday. He will also meet with Devlet Bahceli, the leader of Turkey’s nationalist party, later today.
The leaders are expected to discuss political developments following the failed coup attempt and a number of changes to the constitution the three parties have earlier agreed on. The meetings come immediately after Kilicdaroglu criticized the AKP government in an interview published Mondayfor moving ahead with various post-coup legal measures without consulting with the opposition.
Speaking after his meeting with Kilicdaroglu, Prime Minister Yildirim stated: “We will consider Kilicdaroglu’s concerns regarding the Executive Orders.” and said that meetings between party leaders will continue.
While Yildirim is visiting the two party heads, he is skipping Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the third opposition party in Turkey’s National Assembly. A pro-Kurdish leftist coalition, HDP rose to prominence under its charismatic young leader Selahattin Demirtas in the past couple of years. The party surged in the June 7 elections and effectively utilized Turkey’s electoral mathematics to prevent Recep Tayyip Erdogan from implementing plans to reshape the country’s parliamentary democracy into a presidential system.
Following the reignition of armed conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish militants after the elections, however, the pro-Kurdish HDP and Demirtas came under severe attack by Erdogan and the AKP government. In addition, the Turkish parliament passed a bill to remove legal immunities for MPs in June to allow HDP members including Demirtas to be tried for complicity with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a designated terrorist organization in Turkey, the EU and the U.S.
While the post-coup political environment is one of rare unity and politeness in Turkish politics, the ruling party’s attitude towards the HDP remains unchanged. Yildirim’s decision not to meet with the HDP leadership is a continuation of an effective boycott of the pro-Kurdish party by the AKP: At President Erdogan’s call, AKP officials as well as pro-AKP public officials stopped all meetings and negotiations with HDP lawmakers in late 2015.
While the two parties often cooperated before the peace negotiations between the Turkish state and the PKK fell apart in June 2015, there is no indication that the AKP (and effectively the Turkish state) will end its boycott of the HDP anytime soon. President Erdogan similarly skipped HDP co-heads Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag when he invited Turkey’s opposition leaders to a meeting last week.
President Erdogan, in an effort to reduce political tension and division in the country since the meeting, decided to withdraw all personal lawsuits he has opened for personal insults—which constituteover 3,000 legal cases. In another sign of continued hostilities, however, Erdogan’s lawyer Huseyin Aydin announced on Monday that cases against HDP MPs will remain in place.