by Our Foreign Desk

TURKS went to the polls yesterday for parliamentary elections that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes will give him power to alter the constitution.

But a shadow hung over the vote following explosions that ripped through a People’s Democratic Party (HDP) rally on Friday in Diyarbakir, killing two people and injuring more than 200.

Since becoming president in 2014 after 11 years as prime minister, Mr Erdogan has sought to win new powers for the supposedly apolitical head of state role — but he needs a 367-seat “supermajority” in the 550-seat parliament to make these a reality. The campaign has seen the president defy constitutional norms by aggressively taking part, calling for a “new conquest” by his Justice and Development Party (AKP) and comparing himself to Mehmed II, the sultan who conquered Constantinople in 1453 and ended the Byzantine empire.

Increasingly hysterical language directed against the mainly Kurdish HDP has seen the group slammed as “traitors,” and many of its supporters blamed Mr Erdogan for the bombings, chanting “murderer Erdogan” at commemoration marches on Saturday.

HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas called for a peaceful election following the blast, but the president said the party had “provoked” the violence and accused Mr Demirtas of ignoring his phone call when he tried to offer condolences.

The HDP has recently extended its focus from Kurdish rights to defending Turkish secularism and women’s rights, both of which are seen as under threat from Mr Erdogan’s variety of political Islam.

It has welcomed prominent AKP defectors such as Burhan Saran and looks set to surpass the 10 per cent hurdle Turkey requires for parties to gain seats in parliament.

Women’s rights have also been put at the heart of the election campaign by the Communist Party, all 550 of whose candidates are women.

Denouncing a “social order that murders and humiliates [women] on a daily basis,” the CP says the decision to run only female candidates “makes a statement to society that the liberation of working-class women can only happen through women leading the struggle not only against women’s oppression but the system of exploitation itself.”