DEM Party Europe thanks all international parties and friends for solidarity during elections

The DEM Party's European representation thanked everybody for the solidarity and support received.

The DEM Party's European representation issued a statement thanking all "sister parties in the international arena who did not leave us alone in this difficult election. In particular, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to all friends who participated in the election observation from different European countries and parties, at our request."

The statement added: "Despite our concerns about electoral fraud and the critical situation, we appreciate and value your efforts to show solidarity and support us during these difficult times by travelling to the Kurdish region.  In the 31 March local elections, our party achieved great success by standing for election under extremely difficult conditions.

After the 2019 elections, the AKP regime seized all the municipalities that we had won with an overwhelming majority of votes. Our party's co-mayors and municipal councilors were arrested and replaced by state administrators who practised corruption and left our municipalities millions of dollars in debt. Lack of international criticism made these anti-democratic practices continue. Still, for more than seven years, many of our MPs, co-mayors, and councilors, including our former co-chairs of the HDP, are still being held hostage in Turkish jails on arbitrary grounds."

The statement underlined that "despite winning the majority of the votes in three Kurdish provinces, Sirnak-Kars-Bitlis, the Erdoğan regime refuses to hand over these ci2es to us, using blatant irregularities that we have appealed against."