Kurdish lawmaker briefly detained in Turkey

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) - Turkish police in the Kurdish city of Batman arrested the opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) lawmaker Ayse Acar Basaran on Monday in relation to a "terror-related" judicial case.

Basaran was at Batman airport to travel to the Turkish capital of Ankara where she was to attend the Parliament before the police detained her, reported Kurdistan 24's bureau in the neighboring city of Diyarbakir.

After an hours-long interrogation at a Batman courthouse, authorities released the Kurdish lawmaker.

The Monday detention was the second time Turkish authorities have taken Basaran into custody since April when police raided her house with an arrest warrant.

A government crackdown on the HDP and its sister organizations has seen thousands of people arrested, including hundreds of local officials, over 80 elected mayors, the party's charismatic co-leader Selahattin Demirtas, and at least ten other lawmakers since last year.

Authorities have at times kept Kurdish politicians in continued detention and other times released them only to detain them again for different cases.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) earlier this month demanded from Turkey on Monday an explanation for the continued detention of HDP officials.

The Strasbourg-based court questioned the Turkish authorities over the legality of the pre-trial imprisonment of HDP lawmakers who make up the second largest opposition bloc in the Parliament.

HDP's Spokesperson Osman Baydemir, himself arrested several times this year, described the assault on his party as "fascism" and "enmity toward the Kurds."

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his cabinet members have accused the HDP of a political front for the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighting the Turkish troops for larger Kurdish rights, an allegation that HDP vehemently denies.

Editing by Ava Homa