Cengiz Çiçek, the Green Left Party's (YSP) first candidate for Istanbul's second constituency, is also a co-speaker of the HDK (People's Democratic Congress), from which the HDP emerged. Çiçek was born in Dersim in 1978 and describes himself as "the child of an Alevi, Kurdish and working family". The family moved from Dersim to Izmir in 1985 due to financial difficulties.

Çiçek lived in Izmir, where he went to school, and then came to Istanbul to study at Marmara University Faculty of Law. He describes what happened after that as follows: “Being the child of a migrant Alevi-Kurdish family shaped our mentality very early on, both class-wise and politically. If you ask me how I would define myself as a child of a working-class family, I am someone who was confronted with class contradictions at a very early age and carries this class anger within me. When I became politically active, I took part in the Kurdish freedom struggle, back then in HADEP. The Kurds are fighting for status, but ours is also a struggle with a working character. As I mentioned at the beginning, I am a worker's child and I define myself both within the freedom struggle of the Kurdish movement and as a socialist."

The second constituency in Istanbul: diversity, history and resistance

The second constituency in Istanbul includes the European side districts of Bayrampaşa, Beşiktaş, Beyoğlu, Esenler, Eyüpsultan, Fatih, Gaziosmanpaşa, Kağıthane, Sarıyer, Sultangazi, Şişli and Zeytinburnu. Cengiz Çiçek said: "One of the HDK’s raison d'être is to confront and overcome this homogenizing system and build a life one hundred years after the founding of the Republic where all the differences in Turkey are united in plurality.”

Çiçek added: “Our program as HDK is compatible with that of the Green Left Party (YSP). Our goals are very similar and with that in mind I would like to reiterate that I am honored to be a candidate for the YSP. The second constituency is very harmonious, colorful and rich in diversity. It is characterized by internal migration. Many people have come here for economic and political reasons, especially from Kurdistan and other provinces. It is an area with a big Kurdish and Alevi population. At the same time, it is a historical place where Armenians, Christians, Assyrians and other peoples live. In that sense, the second constituency is actually a place of sadness. The streets smell of history and memories. From the architecture to the profiles of the people, the entire area is actually like an open-air museum of the historical injustices of Turkey's nation-state approach. It can also be described as a place that gives meaning to our hundred years of struggle and often reminds us of it in everyday life.”

The YSP candidate continued: “But the area is also a place of joy. Taksim in particular is one of the places where the AKP-MHP government has centralized its interventions against people in recent years. It is the site of the 2013 Gezi uprising that embodied the historical spirit of the Taksim Resistance."

Young people find their own way

There will be around seven million first-time voters in the 14 May elections. Cengiz Çiçek said that even at the age of 18 he was inevitably politicized: “The pressures you face using the Kurdish language in daily life and expressing your culture, the lynching, the death, the massacres, the repression, all of this makes you work for a political transformation process. The same can be said for all oppressed identities today. If a space of freedom has been created, it is, of course, thanks to the social and political struggle. We need to keep our heads and minds clear because we are subject to all sorts of manipulative attacks. The strong support for the YSP among young voters shows the politicizing effect of the Kurdish people and the longstanding struggle for freedom and democracy on the people. This process of politicization and the reason for the strong interest of young people in the YSP has something to do with the failure of democracy in Turkey. The political process is not produced at the table or in academies. It takes place in life. Young people in this country are afraid of the future. They cannot find work and cannot express themselves freely. They cannot live freely. All these problems politicize young people. 14 May will be for all of us the day when we will call to account this tyrannical and fascist power. We have nothing to teach young people. The spirit, consciousness, mobility and longing of young people in their search for a new life are really necessary for this society. That is why we propose that more of our young comrades join the political struggle under the umbrella of the Green Left Party."