ELECTION campaigns in Turkey are sometimes exuberant affairs, with the streets decked out with bunting and resounding with jingles. But the mood was mostly subdued as voters prepared to cast their ballots on November 1st.
With every passing day since the previous poll in June, a country long seen as a model of Muslim democracy has grown more polarised. Political feuds and real bloodshed have become horribly intermingled, especially since the reopening in July of conflict between the state and the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). During the current electoral contest, a pro-Kurdish movement, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has denounced its terrible treatment by the ruling Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party. AK is in turn determined to recoup lost ground after losing its parliamentary majority because of the HDP’s unexpectedly high score of 13% in June.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ceremonial position is supposed to put him above politics, accuses the HDP of being a proxy for the PKK, which the HDP strongly denies. He has urged citizens to “teach the people who get backing from this terrorist…