As Turkey’s local elections draw near, more raids and more arrests of opposition party members are taking place.
According to a Mezopotamya News Agency report on Friday, 23 members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), were detained by Turkish police. The DBP is the sister party of the HDP. The party was formed in 2014 and assigned exclusively to representatives on the local administration level.
The police conducted raids at the parties’ members residences in Turkey’s southeastern province of Sirnak, detaining six people. The local administrators of the two parties were among the detainees, according to the report.
Police also stormed the HDP election office in the western province of Izmir and apprehended two members of the party for having a poster of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan on the wall. Six HDP members were also taken into custody in Ankara.
Some 94 out of 102 municipalities in Kurdish-majority cities and towns are now administered by trustees appointed by government, and not their elected mayors. Authorities removed those mayors, elected in the latest municipal elections of 2014, in a crackdown that followed the failed coup attempt in 2016.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan previously threatened the HDP, warning that he will appoint trustees in the place of the mayors again if they are elected in the upcoming local elections.
Erdogan has repeatedly equated HDP with PKK, which has waged an armed insurgency in southeastern Turkey for decades.
Police storms pro-Kurdish party’s offices using rubber bullets – 7 MPs detained
The post Pro-Kurdish Party members arrested three weeks ahead of Turkey’s local elections appeared first on IPA NEWS.
from IPA NEWS https://ipa.news/2019/03/10/pro-kurdish-party-members-arrested-three-weeks-ahead-of-turkeys-local-elections/
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