Prosecutors said that Turkish authorities have launched an investigation with a female parliamentarian for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), on suspicion of having ties to the PKK militants.
This comes after statements by the Turkish Interior Minister, Süleyman Soylu, to the Turkish news TV yesterday, Saturday, that the deputy in the Turkish parliament, Derwit Dylan Zdemir, from the HDP, visited the Kara region, according to the account of an armed person who recently surrendered to the authorities. He has several rules in Kara.
Prosecutors in Ankara said on Sunday that they considered Soylu’s statements a rhetoric and that an investigation had begun into Tasdimir’s links to an armed terrorist organization.
On Saturday, Tasdemir denied the validity of Soylu’s statement.
She wrote, “The Minister of the Interior of this country issued a statement that mentioned my name based on what he called the accounts of one person. We will prove that this is a major lie and defamation.”
The HDP came under renewed pressure during the past week after the government said that PKK militants executed 13 Turkish prisoners in the Iraqi Kara region, including members of the army and police. The PKK said the prisoners had died during clashes in the area.
Several prominent HDP members were previously investigated, tried and imprisoned on terrorism charges. Saladin Demirtas, the former leader of this party and one of Turkey’s most prominent politicians, has been imprisoned for more than four years.
On Friday, Turkey’s High Court of Appeals upheld a prison sentence for another HDP lawmaker on terrorism-related charges, which could open the way for his parliament to be dropped.
Source: Reuters
