‘Are you in?’: Demirtaş responds to Erdoğan’s ‘rally’ remarks

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Arrested in the Edirne Type F Prison in northwestern Turkey since November 2016, former Co-Chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtaş has responded to President and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who targeted him in a speech upon his return from a state visit to Qatar earlier this week.

Addressing Erdoğan on Twitter, Demirtaş has said:

"Erdoğan is apparently curious as I am not holding rallies. The HDP is already at meeting sites. But, if you still want it so much, come on! I will be out for 2 hours and go to Yenikapı [meeting site in İstanbul] with a single megaphone. And you will take to the same site a day later with all means of the state. The one who gathers one person less will quit politics. Are you in?"

What did Erdoğan say?

Upon his return from Qatar, Erdoğan spoke about Demirtaş's call to the opposition to hold seven joint rallies in Turkey's seven regions:

"On the other side, the person in prison in Edirne is telling them, 'Come together, hold rallies together.'

"Instead of saying this, you hold a rally there. You first give a signal to your own base. Does your base have any strength left to hold a rally?

"We are - of course - not in a position to address them. If they are still being directed from there, the attitude of my nation, especially about this issue, is and will be quite clear and apparent. My nation will never make concessions to terrorists or terrorism."

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Demirtaş made a call for joint rallies

Amid the growing economic crisis and increasing costs of living, Demirtaş made the following call to opposition parties in late November:

"If nothing else, is there an obstacle in the way of the chairs of opposition parties represented at the Parliament to call on the government to resign by holding a joint press conference and to demand urgent elections, together with the people, by holding seven joint rallies in seven regions? If not today, when?" (KÖ/SD)