Turkey arrests, then releases Kurdish lawmaker

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - On Friday, Turkish police temporarily arrested pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) lawmaker Ayse Acar Basaran at a guesthouse in Ankara.

Basaran who represents the Kurdish province of Batman announced her arrest on Twitter.

A fellow HDP lawmaker Ibrahim Ayhan of the Sanliurfa Province said police raided the guesthouse at 6 AM in the morning.

After facing a penal court at the Turkish capital, authorities released Basaran in the afternoon.

There was no immediate explanation from the officials, said Kurdistan24 Ankara Bureau.

At the court, she refused to defend herself, calling her brief detention "political."

There are already 11 HDP MPs in prison including the party's co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag who were detained in November 2016.

Turkey's government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuse HDP lawmakers of acting as a political front for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which is locked in a decades-long guerrilla warfare against Turkish troops over Kurdish rights.

The Kurdish politicians have vehemently denied the charge.

Of the jailed HDP MPs, authorities have so far released only Leyla Birlik of the Sirnak Province in early January.

And as a first in years, a court in Diyarbakir sentenced a sitting member of the Parliament, Nursel Aydogan to four years and eight months in prison on charges of having "committed crimes on behalf of a terror group."

HDP has 59 seats in the Turkish Parliament and thus is the second largest opposition block after the Republican People's Party (CHP).

But there are court procedures against 43 of them in mostly separatism and terrorism-related accusations in which some prosecutors demand life sentences or centuries in prison.

A survey published by a Turkish university this week revealed a significant majority of ethnic Turks approved the detentions, while Kurds opposed.

Editing by Ava Homa