Kurdish HDP leader warns Turkey may ban his party

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Kurdistan24) – The co-chair of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas on Sunday warned that Turkish authorities could ban his party next.

Demirtas was speaking to a crowd of HDP supporters in Diyarbakir protesting the Tuesday arrest of two co-mayors of the Kurdish city Gultan Kisanak and Firat Anli. He told the gathering his party’s parliamentarians could also be the target of a further crackdown.

“By attacking the HDP, they are trying to bypass us in the next local, general elections and referenda on issues such as [a proposed executive] presidency,” said the Kurdish leader of the Turkish Government.

The HDP leader’s concern about his party’s future in Turkey was reminiscent of his earlier warning on Friday of the prospects of a government seizure of the municipalities of three main Kurdish cities.

The Kurdish leader also labeled President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Middle Eastern policy as “mad, racist, and anti-Kurdish.”

Demirtas compared Erdogan’s ambitions in Syria and Iraq to those of the overthrown late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 which led to the Gulf War.

The HDP leaders’ remarks came a day after a Turkish court in the city of Urfa banned his colleague, the other co-chair of HDP Figen Yuksekdag, from traveling abroad.

The court revoked Yuksekdag’s passport, considering her a flight risk on charges of “relations to a terrorist organization.”

The accusations were based on a speech last year in which she praised the US-backed Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and their fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

In a statement on its website, the HDP called the travel ban on Yuksedag as “completely arbitrary and contrary to law.”

Meanwhile, a public prosecutor in Diyarbakir finally allowed the mayors Kisanak and Anli to meet with their lawyers late Saturday night after five days of detention in prison.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany

(Hesen Kako and Siddiq Eren contributed to this report from Diyarbakir)