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Turkey
Lawyers from Diyarbakir Bar Association protest the arrests on November 20, 2020. Photo: Diyarbakir Bar Association
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Turkish police on Friday detained 72 members of a pro-Kurdish organization and a bar association in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir (Amed) on suspected links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Cihan Aydin, head of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, told reporters that police began arresting members of the association at 3am.
“Today, we woke up and saw a detention operation against 34 members of our Diyarbakir Bar Association, 24 of them have been detained,” said Aydin, describing it as “political revenge.”
According to Aydin, authorities had said names and phone numbers of those arrested were found in Democratic Society Congress (DTK) documents recently confiscated in police raids.
The DTK is a civil organization working towards resolving the status of Kurds in Turkey. Its co-chair Leyla Guven, elected to the parliament in 2018 on a joint ticket with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was arrested on terror-related charges and accusations of ties with the PKK.
She was released from prison in June, but stripped of her parliamentary standing.
Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency (AA) claimed that police seized two unlicensed guns, 165 rounds of cartridges, digital materials and documents about the PKK in the raids. It describes the DTK as the legislative body of the PKK.
The PKK is an armed group struggling for the increased cultural and political rights of Kurds in Turkey in the last four decades. It is regarded as a terrorist organization by Ankara and its Western allies. Most of the raids against Kurdish activists, politicians and journalists are linked to the PKK.
The arrests come amid a government project to “reform” the judicial system as announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on November 13.
The HDP condemned the detentions, saying one of their leadership members, Berna Celik – a member of the DTK- was also detained.
The HDP denies Ankara’s claims of its links to the PKK, but refuses to call the group a terrorist organization.
Dr. Seyhmus Gokalp of the Turkish Medical Asssociation was also detained, according to Human Rights Watch Turkey director Emma Sinclair-Webb.
Arrest warrants were issued for another 29 people as part of an investigation into the PKK, AA reported.
Umit Dede, deputy HDP co-chair for Human Rights Affairs said in a statement that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) target anyone who seeks democratic politics.
“These detentions, carried out in a rush, against our party and democratic institutions cannot be explained by law. These detentions are a product of the intimidation policy implemented by the AKP / MHP government against HDP and other institutions and individuals representing democratic politics.”
Updated at 7:00pm
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