Almost 4,000 BDP activists, including 14 elected mayors, have been arrested since 2009, many on thinly supported charges of PKK membership.The PKK has escalated its battle in recent months, killing 24 soldiers in an attack last week in the province of Hakkari, south of Van.
The BDP looks less like the political wing of the rebels; instead, the PKK now looks like the BDP's armed wing.
Mr Erdogan has spent much of the past year horrifying liberal supporters with threats to revive the death penalty, raining insults on the "corpse loving" BDP (a pro-Kurdish party), vowing to crush the rebels through military might, and imprisoning hundreds of Kurdish politicians and activists on the thinnest of charges.
Draping a flag over his Ankara house, Mr Erdogan called on supporters to do the same and called Mr Ocalan a "terrorist" again.In this section The occasional leader More trouble ahead Tapping along Still out on the streets Floundering on Edi's turn Europe's new frontier ReprintsThe BDP, wary of antagonising Mr Erdogan, at first took a largely symbolic part in the protests.
"The Turks, of course," huffs Fatma Ekinci, a gnarly grandmother, who lost "two saplings" (a son and a daughter) in the 28 year-long conflict.Yet members of Turkey's largest pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which has close links to the rebels, have embraced a determinedly conciliatory tone.
Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy (BDP) party, accused the government of deliberately massacring innocent civilians to intimidate his people.
Kurdish voters in the country's restive south-east provinces largely complied with orders from the largest pro-Kurdish party, Peace and Democracy (BDP), to boycott the referendum on the ground that it failed to address their demands for greater political and cultural autonomy.
With the main opposition parties firmly against, he has taken to courting the BDP, whose support would win him parliamentary approval for a new constitution to be put to a referendum.Président ErdoganThe minutes of a recent meeting between Mr Ocalan and the BDP confirmed that the presidency is on the table.
The CHP did best where it fielded moderate conservative candidates, as in Mr Erdogan's home district, Uskudar.The other big winner was the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which called the elections "a referendum on Kurdish autonomy".
Iran wants to stir things up," claims Serhat Temel, Batman's BDP mayor.
"We are treated like pariahs," insists Ayla Akat Ata, one of 35 deputies from the pro-Kurdish BDP party elected to parliament in a general election in June.
