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Fifty political leaders from 23 countries have addressed an open letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, urging him to end "legal attacks" against the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).
"If the Erdoğan government dissolves the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), it will likewise dissolve the foundations of democracy in Turkey," the leaders said in the letter published yesterday (March 13) by the Progressive International.
A closure case against the HDP due to its alleged ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been going on for nearly two years now.
The leaders stressed that a possible closure of the party months into the elections places the country's democracy in dire jeopardy.
The signatories of the letter include NUPES leader Jean-Luc Mélenechn, Jeremey Corbyn, former leader of the UK's Labour Party, Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister and the leader of the MeRA 25 movement, linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, Janine Wessler, leader of Germany'S Left Party, and Walden Bello, a scientist and politician from the Philippines.
Also, Germany's ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) released a message on Twitter to express support for the HDP.
"We demand an end to the politically motivated court case to ban our sister party HDP," the party said in a message published in Turkish, English and German. "We know from our own past that you can ban our institutions, but you can never silence our ideas for equality, justice and freedom."
Full text of the letter:
| On 8 February, two days after the devastating earthquakes in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited one of its worst affected cities and said: 'This period is a period of unity.' He went on to denounce criticisms of his government's earthquake response 'simply for the sake of political interests.' But Erdogan is doing exactly what he purports to criticise. Apart from confiscating and monopolising aid and assistance to prop up his support at the upcoming elections, his government continues to prosecute politically motivated cases against the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) amid the national crisis. On 17 March 2021, Turkey's Prosecutor General's Office first filed a lawsuit for a political ban of the HPD before Turkey's Constitutional Court. As a consequence, on 5 January 2023-around half a year before the election date- the Constitutional Court ruled to freeze the HDP's bank accounts and block its share of public funds for the electoral campaign, amounting to 539 million Turkish lira ($28.7m), This trial to ban the HDP is now entering its final phase. On 11 April, just a few weeks before the elections, the Constitutional Court will hear HDP co-chairs Pervin Buldan and Mithat Sancar's arguments against the suspension of the party's funding and the attempt to dissolve it. And it could make its final ruling at any point before the elections. The closure case is the culmination of a state campaign against the HDP that began in 2015 when it first entered parliament as an independent party. Since then, thousands of party members, including its former co-chairs and several elected mayors, have been detained on flimsy pretexts. The possibility that the country's third largest party in parliament- representing more than 10% of the popular vote in the past two general elections -could be permanently banned so close to the upcoming elections places Turkish democracy in dire jeopardy. The peoples of Turkey must be able to freely and fairly elect their representatives-including the HDP. The party strives for a democratic and inclusive Turkey, with freedom, equality and justice for all. It stands for ecology, women's emancipation, and the peaceful co-existence of different ethnic and religious groups. If the Erdoğan government dissolves the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), it will likewise dissolve the foundations of democracy in Turkey, We defend the HDP's right to freedom of association, expression, peaceful assembly and participation in the upcoming elections. It is time to end the legal attacks against the HDP now, once and for all. Signed,
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(AEK/VK)
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