 Co-chair Pervin Buldan, accusing them of “instigating” the street protests in Turkey’s Southeast in 2014 that claimed the lives of 37 people, the Mezopotamya news agency (MA) reported on Wednesday.){kind=link}
The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has started preparing summaries of proceedings for nine pro-Kurdish lawmakers, including Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-chair Pervin Buldan, accusing them of “instigating” street protests in Turkey’s Southeast in 2014 that claimed the lives of 37 people, the Mezopotamya news agency (MA) reported on Wednesday.
The summaries of proceedings reportedly target HDP group deputy chairs Meral Danış Beştaş and Saruhan Oluç, lawmakers Garo Paylan, Hüda Kaya, Sezai Temelli, Pero Dündar, Fatma Kurtulan and Serpil Kemalbay, in addition to Buldan.
After they’re completed, the prosecutor’s office will send the files to the Justice Ministry to be submitted to the Turkish Parliament, MA said.
The development came nearly a week after the Ankara 22nd High Criminal Court accepted an indictment seeking punishment for 108 suspects, including jailed Kurdish leaders Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, on various charges related to the protests that included 37 cases of homicide and disrupting the unity and territorial integrity of the state.
Seventeen out of 20 HDP members who were detained on Sept. 25 due to their alleged connection to the Kobani protests were arrested by an Ankara in court on Oct. 2 on charges that include “membership in a terrorist organization” and “attempting to change the constitutional order.”
At the time Demirtaş called for street protests in support of Kurdish fighters in the Syrian town of Kobani while accusing the Turkish government of failing to provide adequate help to Kobani and of supporting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which had laid siege to the town.
The protests later morphed into fierce clashes between pro and anti-Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) groups in which 53 people were killed.
Turkey, the EU and the US designate the PKK, which took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984, as a terrorist organization. Over 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict between Ankara and the PKK.