The Constitutional Court is currently being asked to order the closure of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a political party with 56 deputies in Turkey’s parliament. An indictment against the party seeks to ban 451 politicians and party members from organized political activity or membership of political parties for a period of five years and forfeiture of the party’s assets. On January 5, the Constitutional Court agreed to a request by the chief prosecutor of the Court of Cassation for the interim measure of freezing the party’s bank accounts containing treasury support which political party groups in parliament are entitled to receive.

The Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament condemned the latest crackdown on the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), reacting to the news that Turkey’s chief prosecutor submitted his final case to the Constitutional Court to shut down this opposition party. Already last week, the court froze the HDP’s access to a bank account through which it received state funding.

HDP, one of the two S&D sister parties in Turkey, is the third-largest party in the Turkish parliament. It won 12% of the vote in a 2018 general election and holds 56 of parliament’s 579 seats. It has been increasingly targeted by the Turkish authorities for several years. As a result, thousands of party members, executives, MPs, local councillors and co-mayors have been tried on mainly terrorism-related charges and, most recently, there has been a full offensive by prosecutors with multiple judicial cases. This adds to the continued detention since November 2016 of former HDP co-chairs Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş, an opposition leader and former presidential candidate.

Nacho Sánchez Amor, S&D MEP and European Parliament rapporteur on Turkey, said: 

“We call on Turkish authorities to stop the crackdown on the HDP. It is a democratically elected and peaceful party and must be allowed to function freely and without intimidation from the government. Its dissolution would be a huge blow to democracy and violate multiple basic freedoms and rights, such as freedom of association, freedom of expression and the right to vote.

“There is no doubt that for me this latest attempt to silence the HDP is linked to Turkey’s upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. The plan is to close down the HDP, radically limiting the election options for millions of voters, and to politically ban the whole of the HDP leadership in order to prevent any possible new party from being founded. It is not only unlawful, but also a huge political mistake. If the HDP is ordered to close, no international independent observer delegation will be able to come to Turkey and say that the elections were fair. This would also move Turkey further away from the EU and further down its current authoritarian trend.”

The Department of International Relations and Foreign Policy of SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance also expressed its deep concern about the General Prosecutor's proposal to the Supreme Constitutional Court of Turkey regarding the permanent ban of the HDP, the third largest party in the Turkish National Assembly. Just last week, the same court decided to suspend the HDP's state subsidy in the middle of the election season.

“These judicial decisions, in continuation of previous prosecutions against the opposition under various pretexts, aim to criminalize the actions of the parties and to suppress the political opponents of the current government, in the context of a plan of total intimidation and weakening of the opposition. It is inconceivable that a country belonging to the Council of Europe should place restrictions on the democratic functioning of parties,” said SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance.

SYRIZA-PA expressed its solidarity with HDP's struggle to hold fair and democratic elections, hoping that the Court will not decide to ban its activity.