Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Kurdish party not to support Erdogan’s push for presidency.  Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to change the constitution so that he can become the country’s first directly elected executive president after his current term as prime minister.  In this quest, Erdogan has been hoping to gain the support of the Kurdish-based Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), and cynics have suggested that this need is behind Erdogan’s push for peace with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).  Erdogan is prevented from running again as prime minister by the internal rules of his Justice and Development Party (AKP).

To achieve his aim, Erdogan needs to push constitutional changes through parliament, which is why he needs the support of the BDP.  However, on 23 September the co-chairman of the BDP, Selahattin Demirtas, ruled out supporting Erdogan on this point. 

Asked in an interview with Cumhuriyet newspaper if “the BDP and the Kurds will back Erdogan”, Demirtas replied:

“No, there will be no support from the BDP either for the presidential system that Erdogan wants or for him as candidate for President of the Republic.  I do not think he is going to get any serious amount of votes from the Kurds as a whole because I know the mood among our party’s rank and file.  They know that Erdogan will not make a good president.”

One of the problems for the Kurds appears to be Erdogan’s Syria policy.  The Syrian Kurds have gained autonomy by backing the regime against the Turkish-backed Sunni Arab rebels.  Demirtas said in his interview: “The prime minister and the foreign minister are warmongering in Syria, both for the country as a whole and the Kurd region in particular.”

*** Al-Shabab threatens more attacks in Kenya and beyond.  Following the attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi that began on 21 September and in which at least 72 people were killed, the Somali Al-Shabab group warned on 24 September that there would be more attacks unless Kenya withdrew its forces from Somalia “as soon as possible”. 

Al-Shabab spokesman Shaykh Ali Dhere described the attack as a “test” which was successful and said that the next attack would be “more successful”.  He also said that attacks would be carried out on other countries with troops in Somalia.  In addition to Kenya, Djibouti, Burundi, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia have troops in Somalia.