Turkey imposes curfew on 16 Kurdish villages, detains politicians
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Kurdistan24) - An indefinite curfew is imposed on 16 Kurdish villages on the grounds of fighting Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas, announced Turkish authorities in Diyarbakir on Tuesday.
According to a statement released on the website of Diyarbakir governor's office, the curfew includes 11 villages in Lice, five others in Hani districts where forests and mountainous areas serve as a sanctuary for Kurdish fighters.
Turkey has repeatedly imposed round-the-clock curfews in dozens of Kurdish cities and villages since August 2015 in an effort to dislodge PKK from population centers and rural areas.
Meanwhile, in the Mus Province, a Turkish court put four Kurdish politicians and a journalist in jail after their arrests last week during house raids by police.
Among the politicians jailed are the Hatice Seker and Ayse Soylemez both provincial co-chairs of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) respectively.
Turkish authorities accuse Seker and Soylemez of "membership to a terrorist organization" alongside the journalist Idris Sayilgan who works for the Kurdish Dicle New Agency (DIHA), reported Kurdistan24 Diyarbakir bureau.
Two weeks ago, Turkish police arrested more than 50 politicians in house raids in districts across Kurdish provinces of Diyarbakir, Dersim, and Bitlis.
The number of detained Kurdish politicians have risen to more than five thousand according to the HDP Co-chair Figen Yuksekdag who spoke to her party's weekly Parliamentary convention on Tuesday in Ankara.
With the jailing of Sayilgan, on the other hand, the number of journalists arrested in Turkey since the July 15 failed coup rose to 89, according to Reporters Without Borders.
In Turkey, which ranks 151st in the 2016 World Press Freedom, over 100 media outlets including a Kurdish children's TV, have been closed in the last three months.
Editing by Ava Homa