Several activists from Northern Kurdistan were detained by security forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Sulaymaniyah on Thursday. According to the Association of Workers from Mesopotamia (Komeleya Karkerên Mezopotamyayê, KKM), four of the at least eight people involved were taken into custody in the course of a raid on the organisation's premises, and four others were detained at their workplaces or homes. The security forces did not give a reason for the raid. It was also unclear what the men were accused of.

"However, since all the people affected by this repression are friends who had to leave Northern Kurdistan due to their political persecution by the Turkish regime authorities and are organised as such within the KKM, we assume that the wave of arrests was carried out at the behest of the government in Ankara," said the association's president Musa Çiftçi in Sulaymaniyah on Friday. The activist condemned the local security authority's treatment of the association members and called the arrests an "anti-Kurdish practice a la Erdoğan". All those concerned were active in Northern Kurdistan for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) or its sister party DBP (Democratic Regions Party) and served various prison sentences in the course of so-called "terror sentences" before they had to leave their homeland to protect themselves from further repression. "It is unacceptable that such people in Southern Kurdistan are victims of repressive mechanisms that we know from the Turkish regime," said Çiftçi.

According to ANF information, the persons concerned are political refugees recognised as such by the United Nations (UN). The security authorities said they would release them after interrogation. However, this has not happened so far. "We also still do not know why the detentions happened in the first place," Çiftçi said, urging the security authorities to release the detainees immediately. "We stress that our protest actions will continue if the authorities continue to refuse to give reasons for their actions and release our friends."