Palestine, HUDA PAR's "cause" and Kurds

HUDA PAR*, which was brought to the parliament by AKP-Erdoğan in the last elections, stands out as the prominent party in the rallies and demonstrations held in support of Palestine since October 7. On October 15th, HUDA PAR organised rallies in Kurdish cities starting from Diyarbakır with the participation of Saadet and Future Party (which were brought to the parliament by CHP-led Nation Ally in the last elections), and thousands of people attended the last rally in Batman.

Since the question "Is HUDA PAR trying to become the Hamas of the Kurds?" has been frequently asked recently, it would be meaningful to take a closer look at the actions of HUDA PAR, its discourse and goals in these actions in order to find the answer to this question.

While discussing the current state of HUDA PAR, it is also necessary to know how and where it got here. To briefly emphasise a few points that are important for our discussion here; first of all, it should be noted that HÜDA PAR's predecessor, Hezbollah, was also supported by the generals who waged a 'special war' against the Kurdish people in the 1990s before the AKP-Erdoğan government. The state only touched Hezbollah after PKK leader Öcalan was brought to Turkey in an international operation (1999) and the PKK, which had declared a state of non-conflict, withdrew its armed forces from the borders; the organisation's leader Hüseyin Velioğlu was killed in an operation in 2000.

Secondly, the imprisoned Hezbollah members were released in 2011 with a legal arrangement made by the AKP-Erdoğan government, after which HUDA PAR was founded in 2012 as the legal party of Hezbollah. In other words, HUDA PAR was founded as a continuation of the AKP-Erdoğan government's policy on the Kurdish question and as an 'instrument' of this policy.

Since the establishment of HUDA PAR, the government's mentors in the media, led by Yusuf Kaplan, have written and said at every opportunity that HUDA PAR should be supported in order to neutralise the secular-democratic Kurdish movement.

When Kobanê was besieged by ISIS in 2014, HUDA PAR's support for ISIS and not for the Kurds under attack was an important turning point in understanding its true identity. When dozens of patriotic Kurdish youth were massacred during the Kobanê events, Erdoğan's use of HÜDA PAR's Yasin Börü as the basis for targeting the Kurdish movement and for the Kobanê trials, which today aim to put Kurdish politics under siege, clearly reveals the 'instrumental' function of HÜDA PAR for the government.

Before the last elections, Süleyman Soylu, Interior Minister of the period, described the AKP's alliance with the religious HÜDA PAR as a "strategic smart move" against the secular Kurdish movement, and furthermore, he claimed that HÜDA PAR had no relation with terrorism and acted as its lawyer.

As for HUDA PAR's "Support for Palestine" rallies and demonstrations, the following points stand out:

First of all, these demonstrations are organised as "support for the Aqsa Flood and Hamas" demonstrations. In these demonstrations, in the speeches made by HUDA PAR Leader Zekeriya Yapıcıoğlu, the secularist PLO and Abbas are even opposed to being taken as interlocutors. Of course, Abbas can be criticised from many points of view, but HUDA PAR members make these criticisms not to defend the Palestinian cause, but to deepen the divisions within the Palestinian cause and to support only the ummahist Hamas. In other words, HUDA PAR does not support the Palestinian cause, but only Hamas with an ummahist approach.

Secondly, HUDA PAR members criticise the attitudes of Islamic countries in the protests, but when it comes to the Erdoğan government, which does not take any concrete steps against Israel beyond words, they remain silent.

On the other hand, HUDA PAR, which does not hesitate to exploit the national demands of the Kurds when it suits it, cannot say a single word against the Erdoğan government's bombardment of the Kurds in Rojava simultaneously with Israel's attacks and massacres against Gaza, and Hakan Fidan's statement "All underground and above-ground facilities are our target", which is no different from the statements made by Israeli ministers for Gaza.

In its demonstrations in Kurdish cities, HUDA PAR, just like Erdoğan, talks about "drinking the sherbet of martyrdom" and tries to back up the religious sensitivities of conservative Kurds with the propaganda that the secular Kurdish movement does not support the Palestinian cause.

However, at this point, it must be said that the secular-democratic Kurdish movement's hesitant stance on the Palestinian issue also opens space for this exploitation. Because saying that the sensitivity shown to the Palestinian question is not shown to the Kurdish question and stepping aside does not contribute to bringing the Kurdish question to the agenda and discussing it more.

On the contrary, the national-democratic Kurdish movement's organising solidarity demonstrations with the Palestinian people could have played and still can play an important role both in seeing the unity of fate between these two peoples and in drawing attention to the attacks of the regional reactionaries, especially the Erdoğan government, against the Kurds. Because such an attitude would not only limit the exploitation of HUDA PAR, but would also serve an important function in exposing the hypocritical policy of the Erdoğan government on the Palestinian and Kurdish question.

Returning to the initial question based on what has been said so far, Hamas has been able to become part of the Palestinian national cause despite the fact that it is indirectly supported by Israel to divide the Palestinian cause - which Netanyahu openly admitted in his 2019 Israeli Parliament speech - and that it bases the struggle against Zionist Israel on an ummahist basis. Perhaps a similarity can be drawn here between the use of Hamas to neutralize the secular-democratic Palestinian forces and the Erdoğan government's use of HUDA PAR for the same purpose. However, the fact that it was founded as a continuation of the Erdogan government's policy on the Kurdish question, that it was carried to parliament by this government and that it has the same ideological codes as the AKP, which has become a state party, makes it impossible for HUDA PAR to be the Hamas of the Kurds from the very beginning.

HÜDA PAR cannot even be the religious-muslim arm of the Kurdish national cause, like Hamas, when it is in such a fateful alliance with a government that is unprecedentedly aggressive against all Kurdish gains both inside the country and beyond its borders. For this reason, HUDA PAR cannot be more than a tool that uses Kurdish religious sensitivities to undermine the national struggle.

* The Free Cause Party (Turkish: Hür Dava Partisi, abbreviated as HÜDA PAR, Kurdish: Partiya Doza Azadî) is a Kurdish Sunni Islamist political party in Turkey.