Vol. 81/No. 24      June 19, 2017

 

Ankara steps up attacks on HDP, Kurds

 
The Turkish government has threatened to strip the citizenship of three members of parliament — Faysal Sariyildiz, Tugba Hezer Ozturk and Ozdal Ucer — leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), based in the country’s Kurdish region, intensifying Ankara’s campaign against the struggle of the Kurds for their national rights.

Their names are on a list of 130 similarly targeted people released by the government June 5, including other members of the HDP, along with members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the reactionary Islamic State and the Fetullah Gulen sect that Ankara says was behind a failed military coup last July.

The three HDP deputies, who are all currently out of the country, are being tried in absentia on frame-up “terrorism” charges. They will lose their citizenship “if they do not return to Turkey within three months,” CNN reported.

Since July, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has arrested around 10,000 HDP supporters, including mayors and city officials from the Kurdish region. On May 30 the government imposed a curfew on 43 villages in the area as part of the Turkish military’s offensive against the banned PKK.

There are some 15 million Kurds in Turkey, part of the larger Kurdish region that also encompasses parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran. The oppressed Kurdish people are the largest national grouping worldwide without their own state.  
 
 
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