This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 006262 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL PHUM PREF TU
SUBJECT:  KURDISH BASED PARTY'S REFOUNDATION 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary:  Various Pro- Kurdish Democratic People's 
Party (DEHAP) contacts signaled strongly to PO in late 
October regional visits that many DEHAP political leaders 
over the next three to six weeks will declare their support 
for the new Democratic Society (Demokratik Toplum Hareketi) 
political initiative declared two weeks ago by the four 
Kurdish former MP's, including recent Andrei Sakharov award 
winner Leyla Zana.  Additionally, every Kurdish community 
contact whom PO encountered last week dismissed the recent 
announcement by Turkish tribal leader Dervis Akgul of a new 
party in Turkey aligned with Marsoud Barzani and his Iraqi 
Kurdish Democratic Party as "insignificant and politically 
unviable." End Summary. 
 
¶2. (SBU) Various Pro- Kurdish Democratic People's Party 
(DEHAP) contacts in differing levels of detail signaled 
strongly to PO in late October visits to Diyarbakir and 
elsewhere in southeast Turkey that DEHAP core political 
leaders over the next three to six weeks will declare their 
support for the new Democratic Societal Movement (Demokratik 
Toplum Hareketi) political initiative declared recently by 
the four Kurdish former MP's, including recent Andrei 
Sakharov award winner Leyla Zana.  Contacts say that the 
determination to take this "transformational step" has 
emerged independent of pending court cases which may result 
in orders to close DEHAP. 
 
¶3. (SBU) They see the movement being buoyed by these 
declarations of prominent support leading to a platform 
debate, legal formation of a new nationwide, leftist party 
and leadership decisions by February to early March 2005. 
They say that DEHAP party resources will support this new 
party's development and anticipate DEHAP rank-and-file "will 
follow where we lead," one prominent DEHAP provincial party 
leader said.  Their goal is to establish a major leftist 
party with nationwide reach by early 2005 "which can keep 
the Kurdish issue on the national agenda as well as unify 
some (Comment: largely unspecified. End comment) leftist 
national social issues."  One contact did speculate that the 
new political party also would focus on better health and 
education services for Turkey's poor, but clearly cautioned 
that no one can accurately prejudge the outcome of 
anticipated province level party caucuses on the new party's 
platform. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Few DEHAP contacts would offer their thoughts on 
who might eventually lead the new party, but several 
repeated Zana's press comments that she would demur from 
doing so.  Several contacts, including one close to recently- 
elected and popular Diyarbakir mayor Osman Baydemir, noted 
that Baydemir planned a high profile endorsement 
announcement soon after his return from an ongoing trip to 
EU countries to lobby on behalf of Turkey's EU accession 
candidacy. 
 
¶5. (SBU) Several DEHAP contacts projected fragmentation 
within the leftist nationalist DSP and CHP party ranks over 
the coming year or two, and anticipate receiving blocs of 
voters from those parties to bolster their ranks.  "(Current 
CHP party leader) Deniz Baykal already sees this threat and 
that is why he is trying to undermine the new movement 
before it even starts in press comments now," one Diyarbakir 
mayor's office and DEHAP official commented.  They also 
pointed to a DEHAP victory in Tunceli, a former CHP bastion 
where Alevi's shifted votes to DEHAP in last March's 
municipal elections, as a harbinger of future voting trends. 
Asked about DEHAP losses of former prominent municipal posts 
in Van and Siirt, and elsewhere in the southeast at sub- 
province levels during the past election, one DEHAP 
strategist conceded that the vote showed the party that it 
could not be complacent about its regional support. 
However, he then offered that overall DEHAP votes changed 
little and repeated the other contact's optimism about the 
"breakthrough with the Kurdish Alevi bloc in Tunceli." 
 
¶6. (SBU) Additionally, every Kurdish community contact whom 
PO encountered last week dismissed the recent announcement 
by Turkish tribal leader Dervis Akgul of a new Iraqi Kurdish 
Democratic Party-aligned and Barzani-linked party as 
"insignificant and politically unviable."  One DEHAP 
province level leader pointed out that this tribal 
connection yielded only several thousand voters in recent 
municipal polling and said that the tribal leader may even 
be pushing further on the issue than Barzani himself would 
wish. 
 
¶7. (SBU) In general, one contact with over a decade of DEHAP 
and its predecessor party organizational experience, pointed 
that small parties in southeast Turkey fare poorly.  For 
example, he noted how an independent Kurdish candidate, 
Melik Firat, had run for parliament in the most recent 
national elections, spending much money and time in a 
developed electoral campaign and still received only three 
to five thousand votes. 
 
 ¶8. (SBU) Comment: DEHAP has been preceded in recent years 
by similar leftist, pro-Kurdish parties, such as HEP, DEP 
and HADEP.  Like DEHAP, each of these has been limited in 
scope and ambition by its single region and single issue 
appeal.  Reaching beyond this regional focus and 
successfully embracing leftists on a national scale is 
ambitious and would be a new Turkish political development. 
Nevertheless, it is also a very tall order for DEHAP.  It 
will take more outreach and political organizational skills 
than DEHAP or its predecessors has demonstrated to date to 
develop this nascent movement into a nationally viable 
party, but the possibility of this development has energized 
DEHAP party faithful in southeast Turkey for now.   We will 
follow these reports to see whether DEHAP leadership support 
declarations occur and party caucuses are widespread.  End 
Comment. 
 
¶9.  Baghdad minimize considered. 
 
EDELMAN