24 July 2015 is an important date in Kurdistan. This day marks the end of talks on a solution to the Kurdish question and the start of the practical implementation of the "decomposition plan" of Turkish AKP rule. This plan, known in Turkish as the "Çöktürme Planı" - meaning "to bring to its knees" - was drawn up back in 2014, during the dialogue process between Ankara and Abdullah Öcalan, and is a military and political concept of annihilation by the Turkish state against the Kurdish population.

With the unilateral cancellation of the so-called Imrali talks by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, not only did the all-out war against Kurdistan and the Kurdish liberation movement begin again, but also an unprecedented political campaign of destruction against the democratic opposition. The HDP and DBP as well as their predecessors and successors - parties that stand in the tradition of their original party HEP - were at the centre of these attacks.

The Turkish state used the policy of trustees as a particularly effective weapon against the democratic opposition. The method of removing elected mayors, arresting them and replacing them with state-appointed trustees had already been used after the pseudo-coup in July 2016 in order to weaken the democratic opposition and ultimately destroy local self-government. This policy of occupying the political will of the population, which is traditionally accompanied by detentions and imprisonment of the grassroots, continued after the local elections on 31 March 2019.

This year, Erdoğan's repression machine has been running at full speed against the country's democratic forces. This is according to a recent report presented by the Committee for Law and Human Rights of the DEM Party (Peoples’ Party for Equality and Democracy) in Ankara on Monday.

The report summarises the rights violations against active members of the opposition parties under the umbrella of the HDP since 2015 - and paints a clear picture. The extreme intensity of the "anti-terror operations", as Ankara declares its actions against democratic politics, is particularly striking. Raids and detentions have taken place practically every day, and the AKP/MHP alliance has de facto abolished the separation of powers.

At least 2,906 members of the HDP, DBP, YSP and DEM parties were detained in 2023 (as of 10 December), 319 of whom were remanded in custody. According to Nuray Özdoğan and Öztürk Türkdoğan, the co-spokespersons of the DEM party's Human Rights Committee, the detainees included ordinary members, local politicians at district and provincial level as well as those responsible for party councils and central executive committees. The number of detentions recorded in the ranks of the democratic opposition since July 2015 has thus increased to 22,818. At least 4,334 members, including a number of mayors, members of parliament and former party leaders, have ended up in prison.

The number of co-chairs of district and provincial organisations arrested in the last eight years alone amounts to 305. 24 MPs and 30 members of the central executive councils of the party were imprisoned in the same period. According to the DEM report, 7 former members of parliament and 14 members of party executive councils remain behind bars - along with 44 deposed mayors. During the coup against local politics in 2016, the Turkish government had 93 co-mayors arrested, and 43 others were arrested in 2019.

The number of physical attacks on members and activists of the democratic opposition is also dramatic. According to Türkdoğan, his party estimates that 336 violent attacks took place between 2015 and 2023. "Two of our members were killed and another 76 injured in these attacks. In addition, several bomb attacks have been carried out against the HDP and its sister parties. These claimed 142 lives and injured almost a thousand people," Türkdoğan said.

The renowned lawyer, who is also deputy co-chairman of the DEM party, emphasised that the plan to destroy Kurdish society is still in place today. Part of this plan was that strongholds of the democratic opposition such as Sur, the old town of Amed (tr. Diyarbakır), or the towns of Nusaybin and Cizre, were razed to the ground during the curfews imposed in 2015 and the subsequent months-long military siege. "Despite the gloomy sight of this balance sheet, we will not be intimidated," emphasised Nuray Özdoğan. She stated that the resistance for the ideals of her party; pluralism, tolerance, absolute gender equality, decentralisation, direct and participatory democracy, peace, civil rights and social justice, will continue unabated.