HDP protests legislative session opening after mass detention of members

Photo: Filiz Kerestecioğlu / Twitter

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers protested today's (October 1) opening of the legislative session over the mass detention of its members on September 25.

The fourth session of the 27th term of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) has begun with a ceremony at the general assembly.

HDP Co-Chairs Pervin Buldan and Mithat Sancar and the party's MPs staged a sit-in protest in the garden of the parliament.

Detention warrants were issued for 82 members of the HDP, including Kars Co-Mayor Ayhan Bilgen and former lawmakers, over the 2014 "Kobani protests" in the Kurdish-majority provinces. A court extended the detention period of 20 members of the party's central executive committee.

Kars Co-Mayor Şevin Alaca and several party members in the province were also detained today.

Making a statement for the press at the parliament, Buldan said, "These operations are not legal but political. It is a political coup operation carried out in accordance with the AKP-MHP government's political agenda.

"We are facing an operation that is the extension of the political coup operation on November 4, 2016, when our co-chairs and lawmaker colleagues were arrested and the trustee coup on November 19, 2019, which disregarded the people's will," she remarked.

After losing municipalities to opposition parties in last year's local elections, the government was "taking the revenge" from the HDP, Buldan added.

"They want to eliminate the democratic political ground, those who do democratic politics and democratic organizations. They are implementing a plan to make democracy collapse," she further noted.

Buldan also recalled Servet Turgut, who died yesterday after being allegedly dropped from a military helicopter, saying, "I denounce those who did this inhuman torture, those who are responsoble for that and those who protect them."

"Of course, they will not be able to cover up this torture. As the HDP, we will make every effort for the perpetrators and those responsible to stand before the court," added Buldan.

Sancar: The operation targets the whole opposition

Co-Chair Mithat Sancar said the operations targeted the demand for democracy in Turkey and the will of the Kurdish people.

"Yes, the operation carried out against us is, above all, an attack to the struggle for democracy and the public opposition. This is why we call this operation a political coup," said Sancar.

"The aim of the political coup operation is to establish the regime they want in a society without an opposition," he said.

"The other target of this operation is the will of the Kurdish people. There is an attempt to attack the will and dignity of the Kurdish people in the person of the HDP.

"The political banishment operation against the political representatives of the Kurdish people through the judiciary is also being deepened by leaving the racist attacks unpunished. It is becoming widespread with the use of the wildest methods of torture. All these are other legs of political banishment.

"Now, the duty of us, the duty of Turkey's democratic powers, the political opposition in Turkey, is to record the government's approaching end in the first election.

"Our call is for all democratic power. Let's grow the struggle together and remind the political opposition of its responsibilities together every time."

(AS/VK)