Pro-Kurdish DTP Supports 75 Candidates

This week, the independent candidates that the Democratic Society Party (DTP) is going to support will be announced. Özcelik of the DTP said that the party has organized a commission of 15 people to chose the most suitable candidates out of the 250 applicants.

Including the independent candidates of the left that the DTP has promised to support in Turkey's mostly Western metropoles, the DTP will support a total of 75 candidates. Their names will have to be announced by 4 June, the deadline for candidature.

According to Özcelik, DTP co-chairpersons Ahmet Türk and Aysel Tugluk are among the applicants. Former Democratic Party (DEP) MPs are also among the applicants, but Leyla Zana, who was a DEP MP and later imprisoned for eleven years, has not applied.

A singer, a lawyer, trade unionists

Other applicants are Kurdish singer Ferhat Tunc, Diyarbakir Bar Association President Sezgin Tanrikulu, the owner of the Umut Bookshop that was bombed in Semdinli, Seferi Yilmaz, the former general secretary of the Confederation of Trade Unions of Public Workers (KESK), Sevil Erol, and its present general secretary Abdurrahman Dasdemir.

Not enough women applicants

Özcelik added that among the applicants there were 25 women, 10 of whom could be chosen for favorable constituencies and enter parliament.

The DTP has a women's quota of 40percent, much higher than other parties, but Özcelik emphasized that the electoral hurdle of 10percent had forced them to enter the elections not as a party, but with independent candidates. There were not enough women applicants to reach the 40percent quota.

In Diyarbakir, where the DTP enjoys strong support, four of the sixteen applicants were women, in Batman three out of eleven; in Van one of the seven applicants was female.

Ballot paper strategy

In the past, independent candidates' names were written on separate ballot papers, thus making it easy for the less-educated or illiterate to find - and vote for- them. Recently, parliament showed amazing unity when it passed a law that places the names of independent candidates on the same ballot paper with all the other party candidates.

Özcelik said that they would make use of visual techniques to make the names of the independent candidates stand out, and that illiterate voters would be accompanied by a literate relative. (TK/ZA/AG/EÜ)