NORTHERN KURDISTAN–ever since the AK Party took over the power in Turkey, it have been attempting to manipulate the people of Turkey and particularly Kurdish people in Northern Kurdistan to back AK Party’s policy changes in Turkey, including today’s constitutional amendment referendum.
However, despite the promises that the AK Party gave to the Kurdish people that the Kurdish issue will be solved peacefully and democratically, the promise which was given to the Kurds was not honoured by the AK Party. Instead, AK Party’s government increased its discriminatory policies toward the Kurds, and tightened their existing Turkishness rules and policies.
Because the Turkish government have not kept its promise, the pro-Kurdish party BDP asked Kurdish people to boycott referendum.
BDP’s decision to boycott the referendum had a huge impact in almost all of the Kurdish cities, where voter turnouts stayed under 50 percent.
In most populated Kurdish city, Diyarbakir nearly 70 percent of the voters joined boycott campaign.
Only 276,609 of the total 840,859 voters casted their votes. Over half a million Kurds did not vote in the referendum.
In Van, second largest Kurdish city, voter turnout is 48 percent according to final results.
Only 7 percent of the total eligble voters showed themselves in ballots while a record of 93 percent joined boycott campaign in Hakkari.
77 percent of Sirnak’s voters also boycotted the referendum.
Mardin, Siirt and Batman are the other cities where voter turnout stayed under 50 percent.
In Mus 46 percent and in Dersim 35 percent of voters joined the boycott campaign by the BPD.