The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) established itself as a key player in Turkish politics after it secured 13 percent of the popular vote and eighty seats in Turkey’s Grand National Assembly in June 2015. This was possible because it managed to build a coalition with Turkey’s leftist and progressive political forces while incorporating influential local Kurdish political actors.

However, since this initial breakthrough, escalating levels of repression from the government of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have decimated the HDP’s institutional base and political influence. The Turkish authorities have jailed the leading figures of the party and removed its elected mayors from office. A vicious campaign by pro-government and state media has depicted the HDP as a focal point of violence and terrorism.

As a legal case designed to permanently shut down the HDP and ban many of its leading figures from participating in politics nears a conclusion, the party once again finds itself at the center of Turkish politics. On May 14, Turkey will hold parliamentary and presidential elections. Depending on the outcome, either Erdoğan’s conservative nationalist government will consolidate its grip on power, or else the country may start returning to parliamentary democracy under the leadership of the opposition’s mild-mannered presidential candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.