begin quote from:
ISTANBUL
— The Turkish police detained the two co-leaders of Turkey’s main
Kurdish opposition party and several of its lawmakers on Friday during
early-morning raids as part of a counterterrorism investigation, the
state news …
ISTANBUL — The Turkish police detained the two co-leaders of Turkey’s
main Kurdish opposition party and several of its lawmakers on Friday
during early-morning raids as part of a counterterrorism investigation,
the state news media reported.
The
leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag of the Peoples’
Democratic Party, were detained after police officers in the
southeastern city of Diyarbakir and the capital, Ankara, raided their
homes, according to officials from the party, known as the H.D.P.
Simultaneous
raids were carried out at the party’s headquarters in Ankara, where at
least nine of its members of Parliament were detained.
Mr.
Demirtas, whose coolness under pressure and rhetorical skills have
prompted comparisons to President Obama, had until recently been
considered a bright star
on Turkey’s political scene. He had widened the H.D.P.’s appeal by
attracting liberal and secular voters before the government intensified
its efforts to undermine him and his party.
The
detentions on Friday appeared to be part of a wider crackdown on the
party, Turkey’s fourth-largest. The Turkish government has accused it of
being the political wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish
militant group that renewed a decades-long insurgency against the
Turkish state last year after the breakdown of a two-year cease-fire.
The
H.D.P., which became Turkey’s first pro-Kurdish party to enter
Parliament last year when it won 59 out of 550 seats, denies links to
Kurdish militants. It says that it seeks to promote a peaceful solution
to the Kurdish conflict while defending the rights of Kurds.
“The
H.D.P. calls on the international community to react against Erdogan
Regime’s coup,” the party said in a message posted on Twitter after the
detentions of its members, referring to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
This year, lawmakers from the governing Justice and Development Party pushed through an amendment
to the Turkish Constitution to strip members of Parliament of their
legal immunity, a move that is likely to lead to the ouster of Kurdish
deputies.
The
government has expanded a crackdown on its Kurdish opponents in recent
weeks, using extraordinary powers granted by a state of emergency that
was declared after a failed military coup against Mr. Erdogan on July 15.
Dozens
of elected mayors have been detained or arrested on terrorism charges
in the predominantly Kurdish southeastern region, more than 20 Kurdish
news outlets have been shut down, and tens of thousands of Kurdish
teachers have been dismissed from schools.
As
the raids continued on Friday, social media disruptions were reported
across Turkey, with monitoring groups reporting difficulties reaching
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp.
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