In the latest presidential elections of Turkey, which was realized on August 2014, Selahattin Demirtas, the co-leader of pro-Kurdish ethnic party HDP, got 9,76% of the votes. Compared to previous...Show moreIn the latest presidential elections of Turkey, which was realized on August 2014, Selahattin Demirtas, the co-leader of pro-Kurdish ethnic party HDP, got 9,76% of the votes. Compared to previous elections, this meant fifty percent increase in votes of the party. Thus, the main problem of the thesis is that in Turkey, considering the vote limitation of an ethnic party in a historical context, how could the noticeable rise in votes of HDP’s candidate Demirtas could be explained? The thesis will argue that there are several factors which contributed to the success of the HDP. First, for the last few years Kurdish political movement has been following a new strategy with which the party abandons Kurdish ethnic party claims and aims to become a party of Turkey, with increasing democratic modernization emphasis. Second, Gezi movement which occurred in 2013, showed the societal base of leftist movements in Turkey. Democratic modernization of HDP was in line with the ideals of Gezi movement and Demirtas successfully used the discourse of Gezi, whereby he enhanced the electorate base of his party. Lastly, the absence of 10% election threshold had an important role in voting behavior of the electorate and this factor had positive influence on the vote share of HDP.Show less
Articles that investigate minority influence on foreign policy-making have mainly concentrated on minorities living in the United States. Research on national minorities outside the United States...Show moreArticles that investigate minority influence on foreign policy-making have mainly concentrated on minorities living in the United States. Research on national minorities outside the United States has been limited. This paper tries to compare two cases that are dissimilar to the United States, namely Turkey and Israel and this essay asks the question: to what extent do the Kurdish and Arabic minorities influence Turkish and Israeli foreign policy? There is a particular emphasis on foreign policy influence of Pro-Kurdish and Pro-Arabic political parties. The party websites of the Pro-Arabic, Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) and Meretz are looked into. With regard to Turkey, the party website of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) is examined. The BDP has been established in 2008, which is considerably later compared to the pro-Arabic political parties in Israel. Unfortunately, it is impossible to investigate pro-Kurdish parties from before 2008, as these parties were banned by the Turkish Constitutional Court. It is argued in this paper that no proof can be found of pro-Arabic and pro-Kurdish political parties influencing foreign policy. Since Israel and Turkey are truly dissimilar to the United States, other cases need to be examined in order to find out whether minorities in other countries influence foreign policy. Moreover, international organizations, such as the Council of Europe and the European Union, can play a role in accommodating minorities. More research is necessary to find out whether international organizations, as the Council of Europe and the EU, play a role in protecting minority rights.Show less
