After nationwide house raids and searches as part of an arrest operation, the provincial association of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) in Izmir in western Turkey was also stormed on Tuesday. Police said they searched for ESP activist Ali Haydar Keleş, who was not at the address at the time of the raid. Other people present were subjected to a criminal record check and were not allowed to leave the building for several hours, reported HDP MP Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit.

In the morning police carried out operations against ESP members in seven provinces. Fourteen persons, among them former ESP leader Çiçek Otlu, who is currently sitting in the executive council of the party and who has been released only since last September after two years of remand in custody, and Sedat Şenoğlu, member of the ESP party council and co-spokesman of the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK), have been arrested. The search for three more persons is continuing.

ESP described the Turkish security authorities' actions against its members as a "political campaign of annihilation". The party classifies itself as a mass revolutionary party of proletarians, women, youth, rural and urban workers, intellectuals and artists, the poor, the disabled and the politically, economically and socially oppressed.

The ESP statement on the arrest operation said: "The action is part of the ongoing attacks on the organized forces of the working class and disadvantaged. They want the people to be silenced, unresponsive and passive. To this end, the pioneers of the struggles against oppression are to be silenced."

In the meantime, a public press release on the repression against ESP in Alsancak district was banned by police.