HDP's Demirtas toughens stance amid continuing violence between PKK, Turkish forces

DIYARBAKIR, ERBIL (K24) - Co-chair of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas, said Friday that the Turkish military deployment in curfew-imposed Kurdish areas amounted to "occupation," as clashes continued in the towns of Cizre and Silopi in Sirnak Province and the central historic Sur district in the city of Diyarbakir.

At a press conference at the headquarters of the Congress for a Democratic Society (DTK), an umbrella organisation for Kurdish associations in Diyarbakir, Demirtas accused the Turkish government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of "staging a coup" in Kurdistan and "waging war" on the Kurdish people.

The other HDP Co-chair, Figen Yuksekdag, Co-chair of the HDP-aligned Democratic Regions' Party (DBP) Kamuran Yuksek, Co-President of the Congress for a Democratic Society (DTK), and veteran politician Hatip Dicle were also present at the press conference.

Likening the operations to the 1980 coup d'état, Demirtas said "Fascism does not end with nice requests; we call on our people to embrace the honourable resistance," in an implied reference to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and PKK-affiliated Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDGH) fighters engaging in clashes with Turkish forces throughout many Kurdish areas in the country. He added , "I thank those heroes leading the resistance."

Declaring the curfew orders by Turkish authorities as illegal and accusing the government of committing a crime, Demirtas asserted, "We [Kurds] want to live in our lands as an honourable people." The HDP leader said that there were six Turkish generals, 36 colonels and 10,000 soldiers in Cizre, a town alongside the Turkish - Syrian border and where dozens of civilians, PKK fighters, and Turkish forces have been killed in the last two weeks of rising violence.

Demirtas reiterated his party's position which seeks a renewal of the collapsed peace talks between Turkey and the PKK, "but [a new round of] negotiations should take place under the supervision of a third side," he added, without specifying further .

Demirtas revealed that HDP and the Congress for a Democratic Society (DTK) would gather on December 26 and 27 in Diyarbakir to "take very important decisions in regard to self-rule."

As the press conference ended, thousands of people gathered in nearby Ofis Avenue in central Diyarbakir to protest the ongoing curfews in the Sur district and elsewhere in Sirnak and Mardin Provinces. Protests turned violent when the crowd sought to defiantly walk toward the badly damaged district, as the police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd.

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