The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in the Esenyurt district of Istanbul was raided by police on Thursday. A special counter-terrorism unit stormed and ransacked the premises in the morning. The street where the building is located was cordoned off beforehand. According to the HDP office, no reason was given for the raid.

The executive committee of the HDP in Esenyurt criticised the raid on their association as an "illegal act of the AKP/MHP regime". The party said that the police had turned the offices into a debris field and destroyed numerous objects. Among them were flags and banners of the HDP, its sister party Green Left Party and the Labour and Freedom Alliance, which were torn up, as well as photos of Deniz Poyraz and Kemal Kurkut.

Kemal Kurkut was shot dead by a police officer in Amed (tr. Diyarbakır) in 2017 on the sidelines of Newroz celebrations. Deniz Poyraz was murdered in 2021 in an attack on an HDP office in Izmir by an avowed fascist.

The police also damaged the library of the HDP Esenyurt office and hundreds of books were thrown on the floor. In addition, the officers confiscated several pictures with the portrait of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan. The co-chairs of the district association announced that they would file charges against the responsible police officers.

The HDP's representation in Esenyurt is a permanent focus of the Turkish police authorities. Last January, several members of the executive committee made public that they had been coerced into informing through attempts at bribery and blackmail. On several occasions, rallies in front of the building were broken up by force, including in September when a statement demanding Kurdish-language education was to be made.

The last raid on the building took place in January 2021 when the then co-chair of the HDP Esenyurt organization, Ercan Sağlam, was imprisoned for alleged “PKK membership”. The basis of the accusation was a mural of Abdullah Öcalan in the local association's premises, photos of which had surfaced on online networks a week ago after the building was disinfected by local municipal personnel.

Ercan Sağlam sharply criticized the actions of the Turkish security authorities after his detention, calling them illegal. He said it was not the mural that was against the law, but the search of the HDP association, which had been carried out without a court order. According to rulings by the Turkish Constitutional Court, images with the PKK founder's likeness or slogans such as "Bijî Serok Apo" are not unconstitutional.