The following article was originally published by Kurdpress on July 18th, 2016.
The co-leader of Turkey pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas, believes that the failed military coup d’état in Turkey on Friday will change the behavior of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and he will possibly alleviate some of his behaviors.
Erdogan ‘scared,’ says Demirtas
“He’s not going to come out of this stronger,” he told Buzz news. “From now on, he’s always going to be scared. That might make him a little easier with his opponents. He also saw that his opponents were not unimportant. We’ve known Erdogan for 14 years. I don’t think he’s going to change right away. But the experience might cause him to question himself a bit.”
Although Demirtas said he doubted that the strong-willed Erdogan’s brief brush with potential political death will fundamentally change him, he said it might force him to adjust some of his ways.
Some hope the coup attempt will encourage Erdogan to soften his attitude toward his critics. After all, it was the same sort of social media and street protests, which his government firmly opposed, that helped roll back the coup and restore Turkey’s democratic institutions. But Demirtas said he feared Erdogan would draw the opposite lesson.
“He now saw how powerful these things are,” he said. “That’s why he will block them more firmly. He knows they helped bring him back to the power. He knows they could bring him down.”
Read the original article above on Kurdpress here.
