Islamic party seeks votes from Kurds

THEY ARE poor, they have suffered 14 years of violence, but the Kurds of Turkey's troubled south-east still have a voice in elections. As yet another Kurdish suicide bomber hit Turkey yesterday, the Islamist Virtue Party made its bid for the disillusioned Kurds' votes.

Under the watchful eyes of security forces, Virtue's election roadshow rolled into Diyarbakir, the ancient black-walled administrative centre of the south-east. This is the country's most devoutly Muslim region, and women clad in the all-covering black Islamic chador marched to the party's rock song theme tunes.

But it is also the area hardest hit by the struggle between security forces and the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) of captured rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, and Virtue hopes to draw on a deep well of Kurdish resentment towards the mainstream secular parties.

In a grim reminder of how high passions run here, a suspected Kurdish rebel was killed in a failed suicide bomb attack in the remote Kurdish town of Tunceli. Turkey has been hit by a series of bombings since the capture of Mr Ocalan in February. Turkish authorities say more than 30,000 people have been killed in the 14-year struggle with the PKK.

Recai Kutan, Virtue's leader, avoided mention of Kurdish separatism or the PKK yesterday. But a vote for Virtue is a vote against the Turkish establishment. Turkey's powerful military has declared Islamists and Kurdish separatists the two greatest threats to the country. In the south-east, it is these two groups that will go head to head in the elections on April 18.

To make gains in Kurdish regions, Virtue must compete with the only political party that can claim to be more controversial than it. The People's Democracy Party (Hadep) may be facing a possible court ban after the election, but it is highly popular in the south-east. It is the only legally recognised Kurdish party in Turkey, and party officials openly say Hadep shares the aims of the PKK.

"I am a realistic person," said Ahmet Bilgin, Diyarbair's Virtue mayor yesterday. "Hadep is the most powerful party here." Hadep has not taken part in local elections before, and it is widely expected to win in key seats, including Mr Bilgin's.

But voting rules in national polls make Hadep unlikely to secure any seats in parliament. To qualify, parties must win 10% of the national vote, something most analysts agree is beyond Hadep's grasp, which will benefit Virtue in the south-east.

Many Hadep candidates agree that Turkey's constitutional court only overturned a bid to bar the party from April's polls in order to split the Virtue vote. A separate case to close the party continues.

The Turkish establishment refuses to give ground on either Islamic or Kurdish rights, arguing that they undermine the constitutional definition of the state as secularist and unitarian. The armed forces eased an Islamist-led government from power in 1997.