The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has decided to participate with hundreds of thousands of people in the final rally in İstanbul of the “March of Justice,” launched by main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on June 15, Hurriyet reported on Saturday.
According to the report, the HDP will also take part symbolically with a delegation that includes prominent party figures such as Ahmet Türk, Mithat Sancar and Celal Doğan, at a rally in the Kandıra district of Kocaeli province, where Co-chairperson of the HDP Figen Yüksekdağ and deputies Ferhat Encu, Çağlar Demirel, Gülser Yıldırım and Besime Konca are imprisoned.
During the Kandıra portion of the march HDP members will not carry the party flag but will instead hold banners that read “Justice for co-chairpersons” and “Justice for jailed deputies.”
Last week Dihaber reported that the HDP plans to stay with the march until it reaches Edirne province, where Selahattin Demirtaş, the other co-chairperson of the HDP, is incarcerated.
Hundreds of local Kurdish politicians as well as 11 HDP deputies are behind bars on terror charges.
Kılıçdaroğlu initiated the march in Ankara in protest of the arrest of CHP deputy Enis Berberoğlu, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison last week for leaking information for a report on National Intelligence Organization (MİT) trucks transporting weapons to jihadists in Syria.
The march will last for 25 days and end at Maltepe Prison, where Berberoğlu is jailed.