Charges Brought Against HDP Members in Turkey for Alleged PKK Ties

The Mersin Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office has brought charges against almost a dozen HDP members. The indictment has already been formally accepted by one of the major criminal chambers in the southern Turkish province. However, the court plans to set a date for the start of the trial at a later date, it was said on Saturday.

Eleven people are accused in the case; People with a Kurdish background active in local politics. Seven of them have been in custody since last May on “strong suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization.” These are a former co-chair of the HDP district association in Yenişehir and six male or male-read activists from the party’s youth council.

The alleged “terrorist organization” to which those affected are said to belong is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). According to the public prosecutor’s office, there are numerous pieces of evidence that support the defendant’s alleged PKK connections. These included, among other things, invitations for a HDP youth conference shared on various online networks and statements made to the Kurdish press that the solitary confinement of PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan, who was held on the Turkish prison island of Imrali, violated the ban on torture.

The defendant’s participation in HDP cultural and political events, as well as in funerals of political prisoners, is also interpreted by the public prosecutor as evidence of PKK membership. One of the youth activists is also accused of “demonstrating his ideological connection to the PKK” by listening to Kurdish-language music. In the same way, he also announced that he recognized Abdullah Öcalan “as his leader”. He heard the music in question – it is unclear which song it was – in the car.

Elsewhere in the indictment there are also Kurdish songs that the activists are accused of – and which they are said to have heard both in their homes and in public, such as cafes. Apparently they were illegally wiretapped by the police for months. The public prosecutor’s office accuses a severely disabled activist who relies on a wheelchair of putting “illegal lettering” on the facades of houses in 2016.

Among other things, one could read “Taxa Roj” (ku. Sonnenviertel), as the Güneş district (Turkish name for sun) in the Akdeniz district is called in Kurdish, and “YPS”. This is the abbreviation of the Civil Defense Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Sivîl), which resisted the Turkish military siege of Kurdish cities in 2015 and 2016. If the defendants are convicted, they face long prison sentences.

2023-11-04 15:30:43
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