Arrested HDP Co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ's third hearing has started in the Ankara Sincan Prison Court Hall.

The court chair protested when MPs monitoring the case clapped as Yüksekdağ was being brought into the courtroom.

HDP Co-chair Serpil Kemalbay, DBP Co-chair Mehmet Aslan, SYKP Co-chair Tülay Hatimoğulları and many EMEP and HDP members are in the audience following the hearing.

Journalists without a yellow press card and foreign committees will not be permitted into the hall.

The committees that want to monitor Yüksekdağ’s hearing are: Parti de Gauche, French Communist Party, Italian Progressives and Democrats Movement, Sweden’s Social Democratic Party, Norway’s Red Party Rødt, Norway’s Social Democratic Party, Greek SYRIZA, human rights activists and lawyers from the UK, German Social Democratic Party, European Parliament Left Group, Ireland’s Sinn Fein, Britain’s Labour Party, Britain’s General Union-GMB, Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance and Liberal Party representatives.

Speaking at the third trial of the main case, Yüksekdağ said: The judiciary in Turkey has never been fully independent, but then again it has never been as dependent as now, never under so much pressure. It is very clear that there is a hand applying pressure on this case.

Representatives of international institutions and the politicians are not being allowed into the court room today because they are "foreign". This shows how much Turkey has isolated itself from the world, how much it has become alienated to human and judicial values.

The legal justice system, the economic justice system and the political justice system in Turkey have come to such a point that the whole country has come to the brink of rot and collapse because of the irresponsibility of the ruling political power.

The coup in Turkey did not begin on July 15. July 15 was merely the outcome. The coup mechanism began to operate with interventions targeting the field of politics. The removal of our parliamentary immunity was the clearest sign of the transition into the coup phase.

We are not being tried by the panel of judges at court, but the AKP, the ruling political party. The ruling power did not feel the need to hide this, as for the judges, they see no harm in concealing it.

On June 7 [2015 election], the peoples gave an ultimatum, saying, "It is time for change, we want a libertarian and fair political sphere". The response of the ruling political power was to press the button for the annihilation of the platform of democratic politics.

AKP now has sorted out the media and all state institutions from head to toe, and HDP politicians are in prison, and it has formed its holy coalition. So what obstacle remains? The social, political & economic situation in Turkey is much worse than it was a year ago.

The discourse recently has been about the "survival of the state, the security of the nation... Yes, Turkey is in fact facing a problem of survival, and the root cause of this problem of survival is the ruling party.

In Turkey, everything is done to put on trial journalists, academics, those who raise their voice for peace and democracy. But the ruling AKP is incapable of trying bribers and thieves, so they get tried in the United States.”