Buldan: Government attacking HDP to cover up failure in Gare operation

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Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Pervin Buldan has said that the government is "attacking" her party to cover up its failure in the Gare operation.

"The government has not responded to the question of why it did not take a step to rescue those people as in the past," she told her party's parliamentary group yesterday (February 23).

"They went to Gare to save the future of their ruling power. They hoped to return with a political victory, with good news from Gare. They sacrificed 13 people for their political calculations. This is the reality of Gare," she said.

The government announced on February 14 that 13 security personnel held hostage by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Gare in Iraq's north lost their lives during a military rescue operation.

While the government has been criticized for the losses, it has ramped up the pressure on the HDP, detaining hundreds of its members after the operation.

She also refuted Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu's claim that an HDP lawmaker went to Gare to meet with the PKK, saying that it was a "big lie."

She also said that the HDP members' previous visits to Qandil, the PKK's stronghold in Iraq's Kurdistan region, and the İmralı island, where PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan is imprisoned, were within the knowledge of the government, which was running a what it called a "resolution process" to the Kurdish question until mid-2015.

Soylu also showed photographs from those visits to support his argument that the HDP is linked to the PKK. However, Buldan said, the photographs were taken and published within the knowledge of Erdoğan at the time.

CLICK - HDP MP Taşdemir to Soylu: Where is this camera footage?

CLICK - 'We went to Qandil with knowledge, approval of Erdoğan,' says HDP Co-Chair

What happened?

Turkey's Minister of National Defense announced that the Turkish Armed Forces launched the "Operation Claw Eagle 2" against the PKK in the Gare region on the night of February 10 at 2.55 a.m.

During the armed conflicts that ensued in the region, two soldiers lost their lives and four others were wounded. Making a statement on February 14, Minister of National Defense Hulusi Akar announced that the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) concluded its "Operation Claw Eagle-2" in the territory of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq's north.

The dead bodies of 13 soldiers and police officers, taken hostages and held by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), were reportedly found during a search in a cave in the mountainous Gare area.

Making a statement later on, Malatya Governor Baruş has said that these persons were kidnapped by the PKK in 2015 and 2016.

(EMK/VK)