“The operations in Diyarbakir against our party members of journalists, artists, and lawyers continue, yesterday in Ankara and today morning in Istanbul,” read a statement by the pro-Kurdish party, revealing that Sahin Tumuklu, the co-chair of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP), has been arrested as well as a few parliamentary candidates of the Green Left Party.
ESP is one of the component parties of HDP operating in Turkey.
“These waves of arrests are plots against the will of the Turkish voters,” continued the statement, without adding how many people were detained.
HDP called on all the parties, oppositions, and the public, to stand against what it called a plot, saying that it was a matter related to everyone. “This is an operation to steal the will of people and the election ballot,” it added.
Sunday’s arrests are a continuation of a wave of arrests that started on Tuesday in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir (Amed), as Turkish police arrested over 120 individuals, including senior HDP officials, for charges of alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkish police on Wednesday arrested a parliamentary candidate of the pro-Kurdish Green Left Party for alleged links to the PKK.
In response to the arrests, the pro-Kurdish Green Left Party released a statement condemning the raids and arrests, stressing that it will not be deterred by the operations.
On Friday, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), in a statement with 26 other human rights and civil society organizations, called on Turkish authorities to stop “systematic harassment and intimidation” of Kurdish journalists, media workers, media outlets, the lawyers that defend them, and Kurdish political party officials.
The Green Left Party is an umbrella under which the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) will participate in the May 2023 elections. HDP formed the party as a precautionary measure as they are facing a court case seeking to shut them down.
HDP has been accused for years of having ties with the PKK, an armed group struggling for Kurdish rights in Turkey, and named a terrorist organization by Ankara. HDP denies any links but says it respects the group’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan and has mediated between the Turkish government and the PKK in the past.
