Beştaş: The HDP stands tall

The AKP/MHP government will have no success with its attack on the HDP which stands tall, explains HDP deputy Meral Danış Beştaş.

The AKP/MHP government will have no success with its attack on the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), says Kurdish MP Meral Danış Beştaş. The actual goal of the AKP is it to make the HDP unfit for work by the appointment of trustees and the arrest of politicians, without having to fall on to a prohibition. "Every morning we wake up with reports of new arrests," she explains, but stresses that the government will not succeed in its goal. The HDP has experienced several similar attacks since 2015, but has always stood tall and grown stronger from election to election.

ANF talked to HDP Meral Danış Beştaş about the current wave of repression against the HDP.

Expression of the AKP's inability

The current situation is both an expression of the AKP's inability and its hopeless situation, Beştaş explains. The ruling party sees the weakening of the HDP as an opportunity to continue its own rule. Beştaş reminds of the great losses, which the AKP had to experience with the local elections; “The government represents today with its partner purely numerically a minority government. It therefore attacks full of anger and hatred because of the losses in the elections on 31 March and 23 June.”

They won't be able to criminalize us!

The lawyer and member of parliament reports that the procedures according to which the HDP politicians are sentenced are completely meaningless.

"They cannot get away with such absurd accusations, there is no such crime. Last week I said in Parliament: You will not be able to label us as a criminal organisation. We are a legal, democratic party that insists on democratic politics and we will never give up. Even if they debate our party and our supporters on television every day, even if they arrest our politicians, they will not be able to criminalize us. This so much criminalized, defamed party still stands on both feet. Nobody can destroy this attitude.”

We insist on early elections

Beştaş continues: “They don't know that feeling. If one day their secretary general is imprisoned, they will dissolve like the wind. At the moment they have chosen brutal violence as a method to continue their rule. However, with their brutal violence they have isolated the country globally and made it a state against which everyone protests. The appointment of trustees to HDP municipalities is a sign of the regime's collapse and simply shows that they are unable to govern the country. There are also domestic contradictions. In this sense, the proportion of the opposition is more than 50 to 60 percent. Because they have seen how great the protest and anger in the country is, they try to intimidate the people by force. But the people overcome their fear, are infected by courage and resistance. The government is afraid of early elections and the loss of government power, so we must insist on new elections."