Year after detention, imprisoned Kurdish leader in Turkey vows defiance

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) - A year after his arrest, Selahattin Demirtas, the imprisoned co-leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said in a series of tweets on Friday that the government's 'policies of suppression' on his party and the Kurdish people were to fail.

"I convey my greetings, and thanks to everyone who has relayed to me their longing and solidarity," a post on Demirtas's official Twitter account read.

"The longing is mutual. Until an honorable reunion, we will continue to resist [in prison]," the Kurdish leader said in another tweet, apparently posted by his office or lawyers.

Turkish police units arrested Demirtas along with HDP's former Co-leader Figen Yuksekdag and ten other lawmakers in the early hours of November 4, 2016, in simultaneous house raids across six provinces.

Moments prior to his arrest he posted his last tweet, saying in Turkish “security officials are at my door in Diyarbakir with an order to detain me.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government and prosecutors accuse the HDP lawmakers detained then and later during the ongoing state crackdown with collaboration with and being a political front for the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Demirtas and other MPs have rejected the accusations, pointing out instead at the robust electoral success of HDP in 2015 elections and its consistent opposition to Erdogan as the reason for their continued detention.

In September, upon several posts from Demirtas' Twitter in which he said his health and morale was high, authorities in the northwestern Turkish province of Edirne where he is in a supermax prison conducted a search in his room.

Editing by Sam A.