Slight relief in AKP's distress over HDP

If Turkish President Tayyip Erdo?an?s intention in his address yesterday was to make the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples? Democratic Party (HDP) angry and decide not to join the ?temporary? election government of Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu, it did not work.

If his intention in asking the other two opposition parties, the Republican People?s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), to behave like a man and join Davuto?lu?s Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) election government, it did not work either.

And if Davuto?lu?s intention was to give a message to whom it may concern by picking up three names from the HDP who are not of Kurdish origin and try to look sympathetic to the MHP, it did not work either.

But if Davuto?lu thought that by picking up key names from the CHP and the MHP, like Deniz Baykal, the former leader of the CHP, Gülsün Bilgehan, the grandson of Independence War hero ?smet ?nönü, or Tu?rul Türke?, the son of MHP founding leader Alparslan Türke?, he could soften the hearts of rivals, it could be said that it partly worked.

Kenan Tanr?kulu, a deputy chairman of the MHP, not only put down the offer but also resigned from his party post, saying that the proposal by Davuto?lu was a humiliation for him. But Türke? accepted it.

Both Erdo?an?s anger and Davuto?lu?s desperate moves boil down to the growing distress within the AK Parti because of going to reelections only with the HDP (along with ?independents? and technocrats, as the constitution dictates); it was their worst case scenario, even a nightmare scenario. 

Holding the HDP?s success in the June 7 election responsible for the AK Parti?s failure in losing its parliamentary majority by carving out Kurdish votes, Erdo?an has...