Last week Diyarbakir Mayor Osman Baydemir gave a warning to Turkish authorities.

Baydemir, seen by many as one of the moderate voices in the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), said that the current leaders of the BDP “are the last Kurdish generation that the Turkish state can negotiate and shake hands with.”

According to him, there is a new generation that is not willing to compromise anymore, and their radical stance has started to influence some of the older generation as well. “A major gap has developed in the way people in Turkey's West and East feel about each other,” Baydemir stated. “We no longer can sympathize with each other. This is unfortunate, but it is how it is.”

“The party that will profit from this disillusionment on June 12 is the BDP. But even the BDP seems to have only limited opportunities to check and control the new radicalism in the Southeast. After the elections the AKP and the BDP will have the chance, one more time, to sit down and find a historic compromise on the Kurdish question, with the support of the Republican People's Party (CHP) that under Kilicdaroglu has indicated its willingness to cooperate constructively on this issue. It seems to be the last chance for this generation of Turkish and Kurdish politicians. If they fail again, I am afraid that, unfortunately, Baydemir will be proven right,” Sunday’s Zaman quoted Baydemir as saying.