Dark Syrian shadow looms as voters head to the polls on Sunday

Kobani.

It’s a name that speaks volumes about the lingering tensions between Turkey and the Kurds. The obscure Syrian border town that made headlines last fall during the battle between Kurdish forces and Islamic State militants has cast a shadow over the election that is pitting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the rapidly rising Kurdish party, HDP.

Officially, Erdogan is in a peace process with the Kurdish militant group the PKK, which killed thousands of people in southeastern Turkey in a bloody struggle for independence. Its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured and jailed 16 years ago, but after Erdogan’s government agreed to language and cultural rights in 2009, and reducing the military presence in the Kurdish region, tensions lowered.

Two years ago, Ocalan ordered a truce, which remains shaky. A new wave of attacks on more than 80 Turkish soldiers, and Turkish bombing raids against PKK bases in Iraq have threatened to topple it.

The Syrian civil war has inflamed passions across borders. When Islamic State fighters besieged Kobani, strategically close to the Turkish border, Turkey at first refused to allow aid to reach the PKKlinked Kurdish militia defending the town. The HDP — a sometime supporter of PKK — called for rallies, and violent protests in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish region led to dozens of deaths.

Caught in a political crunch, the Kurdish party had to both maintain its support among angry southeastern voters, and reassure potential Turkish supporters that it spoke for the wider population.

“Kobani made the Kurds a player in Syria, but they’re seen as an ally of (President Bashar) Assad,” says Michael Gunter, a professor at Ten- nessee Tech University and author of The Kurds Ascending. “Kobani is a symbol of the Turkish problem in the region. Should they support IS, or do what the U.S. wants and fight it? Erdogan believes Assad is worse.” That threatens the peace process with the Kurds, whose Syrian brethren have formed enclaves across the border without interference from Assad, a longtime foe.

It’s doubly worrying to Erdogan because of the expanded role of the Kurds in neighbouring Iraq — and the possibility that they could form an independent country on Turkey’s border if the war-torn state splits up. That, he fears, could lead Turkish Kurds to join them.

An autonomous Kurdish region in Syria could also reignite aspirations of Turkish Kurds for more independence. Meanwhile, Erdogan’s political battle against Kurdish rivals has brought Kobani closer to home. Olivia Ward