In the wake of the wave of repression against the HDK that has been rolling through Turkey since Friday, 36 of more than forty wanted people are in police custody. They are to be referred to the public prosecutor's office at the beginning of the week.
In the western Turkish city of Tekirdağ, 36 opposition activists have been in police custody since Friday. The background is a new wave of repression against the Peoples' Democratic Congress (HDK), the organizing body of hundreds of groups and political activists from which the HDP (Peoples' Democratic Party) emerged. A total of 42 people are reportedly wanted in the investigation led by the Tekirdağ Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The detention operations took place yesterday in eleven provinces of the country, including Edirne, Izmir, Mardin and Bingöl. In Istanbul, police stormed the HDK's headquarters in the central Beyoğlu district, smashing doors and vandalizing offices. While lawyers still have no access to the files due to a confidentiality clause, pro-government papers already provided the Turkish press on Friday with detailed information on the background of the investigation: so-called "terrorism charges."
The chief public prosecutor's office in Tekirdağ accused those affected by the wave of repression of acting "in the spirit of the PKK's goals”, arguing that the HDK was established as a parliament-like structure to "realize democratic autonomy" and to act as an "alternative" to the Turkish National Assembly. This structure is claimed to be "clearly identical in content and organization" to the paradigm of the KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union), the umbrella organization of the Kurdish liberation movement to which the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) also belongs. Reports in the pro-government Turkish press speak of an "operation against the western structure of the KCK."
Those detained so far in the course of the "HDK investigation" are mainly leading members of the HDP, including Abdurrahman Öztürk from the party headquarters in Ankara, Kenan Yıldız from the party council and various co-chairs of district and provincial associations in various cities. Among them, according to lawyers, is a cancer patient who is said to have been detained in a hospital while undergoing chemotherapy. In addition, several doctors and teachers organized within the leftist union federation DISK are in police custody. All of those involved are being held at Tekirdağ police headquarters, and police interrogations are scheduled to begin on Sunday. They are scheduled to be handed over to the public prosecutor's office next Monday or Tuesday.
