Turkey police briefly detains PKK leader's lawmaker niece

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - Turkish police on Tuesday detained, then released the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) lawmaker Dilek Ocalan at an Istanbul airport.

Ocalan who is the niece of the imprisoned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan announced her arrest on Twitter.

Kurdistan24's Istanbul Bureau said police took Ocalan from Ataturk Airport to a courthouse in Istanbul's Bakirkoy district, adding she was being tried by a court in her home province of Sanliurfa which she represents at the Turkish Parliament.

The Sanliurfa court had already issued an arrest warrant for her and another MP, Ibrahim Ayhan of the same province last week.

Authorities released Ocalan from the brief detention after her interrogation and appearing before the court via teleconference from Istanbul.

A prosecutor demanded five years of imprisonment for Ocalan on charges of "disseminating propaganda on behalf of a terrorist organization" and "behaving in a way that legitimizes the terror group's methods of force, violence, and threats."

Accusations brought against Ocalan's niece were based on her February 2016 attendance in Sanliurfa of a slain PKK fighter.

Ocalan is one of a score of HDP lawmakers detained or temporarily jailed in the last four months.

The crackdown on Turkey's second largest opposition party HDP began with night raids on the homes in several cities of a dozen lawmakers including its co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag in early November 2016.

Currently, ten HDP lawmakers are in prisons across Turkey.

Editing by Ava Homa