Vilified as terrorists by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kurdish politicians have already emerged as kingmakers in an opposition bid to unseat the Turkish president and could become a legislative force after a cliffhanger election that risks creating a hung parliament.
The leadership of a pro-Kurdish alliance has extended crucial support to the joint opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, in an effort to end Erdogan’s 20-year rule. The Turkish leader has masterminded a crackdown on the main pro-Kurdish group — the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP — since it briefly denied his allies a majority in parliament in 2015.
