The Peace in Kurdistan Campaign issued a statement to express solidarity with the HDP.

The statement said: "Current political developments inside Turkey should fill the outside observer with utter dismay. The authoritarian nature of the government of President Erdogan and the AKP is exposed for all to see by its ruthless suppression of the Kurds and all their civil, social, cultural and political activities and organisations.

The legal action against the HDP, which gives a strong political voice to the Kurds, must be seen within the framework of the Turkish state’s brutal war waged against the Kurdish population at all levels.

Nobody can be in any doubt that the case against the HDP is not a normal legal action. It is nothing less than a show trial."

The statement added: "It is no accident that the party draws a large proportion of its support from among the Kurdish community. It is this fact above all that makes it a target and its popular progressive political platform which poses a direct challenge to the long domination of Turkish politics by Erdogan and the AKP.   

Against the AKP’s sectarianism, hatred and strife, the HDP offers hope, social progress and reconciliation.

The outcome of the legal case will have hugely significant consequences for the future of the country and it will determine the character of Turkey for a generation. The outcome will be critical for the fraught relations between the Turkish state and the Kurdish population."

The statement continued: "Nothing could be more calculated to provoke disenchantment among the Kurds with the political process in the country than the suppression of the HDP, which has long provided an effective political voice for the Kurdish people.

The defeat of the HDP by these legal machinations rather than at the ballot box will be a grotesque injustice that will stain forever the country’s reputation for democratic respectability, which is already seriously tarnished by the AKP’s increasing authoritarianism.

Peace in Kurdistan has raised the importance of this landmark trial with the UK government at the highest level and we are pledged to continue the campaign whatever the trial’s outcome.

We stand in solidarity with the HDP and call for this show trail to be abandoned.

We applaud your resolve, courage and political leadership. What the HDP represents is peace, social justice, progress and reconciliation between peoples. Those principles are the future and cannot ever be suppressed irrespective of the result of this forthcoming trial."