Turkey arrests a dozen pro-Kurdish HDP lawmakers, party leaders
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Turkish anti-terror police units on Friday detained 12 lawmakers of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), including its co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag.
The arrests occurred in the early hours of Friday in simultaneous house raids in multiple cities.
HDP leaders and MPs live-tweeted their detentions during the night as police knocked on their doors with warrants of arrest in the Turkish capital of Ankara and the Kurdish cities of Diyarbakir, Sirnak, Hakkari, Van, and Bingol.
“Security officials are at my door in Diyarbakir with an order to detain me,” tweeted Demirtas in Turkish moments before his arrest.
Moreover, the HDP’s official Twitter account live-streamed on Periscope a verbal confrontation between Yuksekdag and police after officers broke into her Ankara house.
Similarly, around the same time, the Diyarbakir MP Ziya Pir tweeted he was being arrested.
The Turkish Interior Ministry announced toward the morning that anti-terror police units “captured” 11 HDP lawmakers.
The detained included Sirnak MPs Ferhat Encu and Leyla Birlik, Hakkari MPs Selma Irmak and Abdullah Zeydan, Diyarbakir MPs Idris Baluken, Nursel Aydogan, and Ziya Pir, Ankara MP Sirri Sureyya Onder, and Mardin MP Gulser Yildirim.
The HDP co-leaders Yuksekdag and Demirtas represent Van and Diyarbakir constituencies respectively at the Turkish National Assembly.
Another Diyarbakir MP Imam Tascier was detained in the morning at an Ankara hotel where he was staying, according to his last tweet.
There were arrest warrants for Van MP Tugba Hezer Ozturk and Sirnak MP Faysal Sariyildiz, who were abroad, and Hakkari MP Nihat Akdogan, according to the government-run Anadolu Agency.
According to the Kurdistan24 Ankara bureau, Turkish prosecutors are accusing the Kurdish lawmakers of various crimes, among them:
“Publicly insulting the Republic of Turkey, the Turkish nation, the Grand National Assembly, the President, the military and the police of the state, inciting people to hatred and hostility, inciting the public not to obey the laws, attempting to damage the unity and wholeness of the state, aiding and abetting a terror group, disseminating propaganda for the PKK, and sending weapons to the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).”
The crackdown on Kurdish parliamentarians came after last week’s Turkish detention and remanding to the prison of Diyarbakir’s two elected mayors Gultan Kisanak and Firat Anli.
Demirtas had last week warned against the prospects of his own and other HDP lawmakers’ arrests.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany