In the western Turkish metropolis of Istanbul, dozens of participants of the ‘Great March to Gemlik’ were taken into custody on Sunday. While it was initially reported that about fifty people had been detained, the lawyers' association ÖHD revised the number upwards on Monday. According to this, about seventy people, including leading politicians of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and its member parties, were in police custody until noon at Vatan Police Station, which is notorious as a torture centre. More than half of the detainees have since been released, while 25 have been transferred to the public prosecutor's office in the Çağlayan Palace of Justice, citing alleged "investigations". The interrogations have not yet been completed.

One of those detained is Roni Gören, co-chairman of the Istanbul provincial branch of the Socialist Reconstruction Party (SYKP). Gören was part of the group of demonstrators who managed to break through the police cordons in the district of Kadıköy yesterday, protesting with the demand for the lifting of Abdullah Öcalan's isolation and a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question. The police used massive force to break up the demonstration. According to ÖHD, numerous activists who were dragged from the square were held in prison vans for hours with their hands tied behind their backs and beaten. Roni Gören suffered lacerations to his head and chin from blows with a radio, among other things, which had to be stitched up in hospital.