HDP Women’s Assembly expresses support for Diyarbakır MP Semra Güzel

* News and photo: MA

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The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Diyarbakır Women's Assembly made a statement about the pressure and attacks on women politicians in a meeting in the Kurdish-majority southeastern province of Diyarbakır yesterday (February 7). The meeting was attended by several women.

Taking the floor at the event, HDP Diyarbakır Co-Chair Gülistan Atasoy said that the government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) is in a process of collapse.

"It is stepping up its attacks on peoples in order to get out of this collapse. It wants to drag the entire society to darkness alongside itself. It does not stop targeting especially Kurdish women. We have seen the last example of this in the case of our Amed (Diyarbakır in Kurdish) MP Semra Güzel. We are here to say that we side with all our fellow women," added Atasoy.

Speaking afterwards, HDP Diyarbakır Women's Assembly Spokesperson Yasemin Üçer raised concerns that hardly a day passes without an attack on women's struggle for freedom. She added:

"The witch hunts that began in the darkness of Middle Ages today continue with detentions and arrests as well as policies of isolation and torture against an entire society, especially against women."

HDP Diyarbakır MP Dersim Dağ argued that the attacks targeting Semra Güzel are carried out by the "male and fascistic mentality."

She briefly added, "Today, they are attacking millions in the person of Güzel. They always carry out their attacks through women and they start this with the Kurdish women first. This is an attack on the Kurdish women identity and against the TJA [Free Women's Movement]."

What happened?

The pictures of HDP Diyarbakır MP Semra Güzel with Volkan Bora, who was killed in an airstrike of the Turkish Armed Forces in 2017, have recently been revealed. Semra Güzel has said that Bora was his "fiance" and the picture was "taken during the resolution process".

After the pictures were published and broadcasted by pro-government media outlets, AKP Chair and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, "We have swiftly sent this to the joint commission. The necessary will be done. We don't want to see such people at the Parliament."

Saying that she was not affiliated with any political party when the pictures were taken, Güzel has asked why no investigation has been launched so far into the pictures found on Volkan Bora. She has argued that the pictures taken 5 years ago are used as a "plot" against her.

A summary of proceedings has been issued against Güzel to lift her legislative immunity and sent to the Joint Parliamentary Commission.

Before the Joint Commission convened on January 20, 2022, İYİ Party Chair Meral Akşener and main opposition CHP Parliamentary Group Deputy Chair Özgür Özel announced that they would vote in favor of the summary of proceedings against Semra Güzel.

The Drafting Commission, a sub-commission of the Parliamentary Joint Commission established to review the summaries of proceedings against Semra Güzel, has issued a report and expressed an opinion in favor of lifting the legislative immunity of the HDP MP. (EMK/SD)