A chance to revive a wrecked peace process with Kurdish rebels has been missed as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan taps nationalist sentiment to consolidate his support after a failed military coup, the head of the pro-Kurdish opposition has said. Decrees during a state of emergency, including purges of tens of thousands of suspected coup plotters, may threaten the wider opposition, Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), also said in an interview.

The failed intervention by a faction of the military to overthrow the government on July 15th killed more than 240 people and posed the gravest threat yet to Erdogan’s 13 years in power before it was quickly put down by loyalist forces. The government says the coup’s mastermind is the reclusive Fethullah Gulen (75), an Islamic preacher living in Pennsylvania, whose followers in the bureaucracy and security forces conspired to topple Erdogan and abolish parliament. He has denied any involvement in the coup attempt and has denounced it.

The coup’s aftermath saw a short-lived lull in violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast, where thousands have been killed since a peace process, once spearheaded by Erdogan, collapsed in 2015. Neither the state nor the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) appears ready to parlay that into peace, Demirtas said. “We have not seen any positive signals from either side ... that this will be an opportunity for resolution,” Demirtas said.

“We could have used the coup as an opportunity for the peace process ...but Erdogan does not see this crisis as a way to democratise,” said Demirtas, who also blames the Gulen movement for the coup attempt, as do other party leaders in parliament.

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