MESOPOTAMIA NEWS REPORT : Turkey detains dozens of Kurdish HDP party officials, activist

ANKARA –  MESOP NEWS  – 19. March2021 – Turkish police on Friday detained dozens of pro-Kurdish party officials and a prominent human rights activist, as prosecutors step up pressure on the country’s third-largest party.

A top public prosecutor on Wednesday demanded the dissolution of the leftist opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) over alleged links to Kurdish PKK militants.

The move followed the expulsion of an HDP MP from parliament on the same day.

The top Turkish prosecutor said in an indictment there was no difference between HDP and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, state-run Anadolu news agency reported Thursday.

The HDP said at least 36 party members were detained, including 10 in Istanbul among which were three HDP district chairs, over suspected Kurdish militant links.

Police were on the hunt for five others, state news agency Anadolu reported.

Ozturk Turkdogan, head of the Ankara-based Human Rights Association (IHD), was also detained on Friday in the capital and his house was raided, the organisation said.

“Our lawyers are trying to obtain information about this case. His arrest is a blatant human rights violation. He must be released now,” the IHD tweeted.

After the Ankara chief public prosecutor issued 12 arrest warrants for suspects over their alleged ties to the PKK, 10 were detained.

The Turkish government says the HDP is the political front for the PKK, which the party denies.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan (Bakur) for the Kurdish minority who make over 22.5 million of the country’s 82-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.

A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.

Police also detained 15 suspects accused of making social media propaganda for the PKK in the southern province of Adana.

The private DHA news agency reported 15 current and former HDP executives were also detained in the northwestern province of Kocaeli, and the party itself said one of its officials was detained in the central province of Eskisehir.

Erdogan-EU talks

The indictment to dissolve the HDP put before the Constitutional Court seeks to ban 687 party members from engaging in politics for five years.

The court took the first step on Friday with the appointment of a rapporteur to conduct the investigation and prepare a report for the court’s 15 judges.

It is the latest in a series of crackdowns on the HDP since 2016 during which a majority of its elected mayors have been dismissed and replaced by government-appointed trustees.

Philippe Dam of Human Rights Watch (HRW) described the IHD chief’s detention as “outrageous” in a tweet.

Dam also asked whether European Union chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel would raise the detention and other human rights issues in a video call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expected at 1215 GMT.

Government critics and rights activists noted the latest legal assault on the party began a little more than two weeks after Erdogan unveiled a human rights “action plan”.

“Seems the Human Rights Action Plan has become a human rights violation plan,” Emma Sinclair-Webb of HRW tweeted.

The United States warned on Wednesday that efforts to bar the main pro-Kurdish party in Turkey would undermine the nation’s democracy.