Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairman Özgür Özel announced that a rally planned for Sunday in Ankara to protest defiance of top court rulings in the case of a jailed lawmaker was cancelled due to the news of fallen soldiers in northern Iraq.
After news broke of nine Turkish soldiers killed in northern Iraq, Özel convened an extraordinary meeting of the party’s Central Executive Committee (MYK).
The soldiers were part of Operation Claw-Lock, an air and ground offensive launched in April 2022 that targets hideouts of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Metina region of Iraq.
“In our Central Executive Committee, which met in the morning, we discussed the developments in the Claw-Lock operation. We’re announcing to the public that we have canceled our rally in Ankara planned for tomorrow,” Özel posted on his X account.
The rally was intended to protest a judicial crisis in which the Constitutional Court had ruled twice that the rights of Can Atalay, who was elected to parliament in May from the Workers Party of Turkey (TİP) and is still in prison despite gaining parliamentary immunity, were violated. The 13th High Criminal Court, however, sent the case back to the Supreme Court of Appeals twice, defying the top court’s rulings. The top appeals court, which in September upheld an 18-year conviction for Atalay in the Gezi Park trial, also defied the Constitutional Court’s rulings twice, prompting Atalay’s lawyers to file their third application.
TİP, which had previously announced it would join the rally along with the CHP, also shared the news of the cancellation.
“The rally planned for tomorrow at 13:00 in Tandoğa Square in Ankara has been canceled due to recent developments by decision of the party that organized it. Our struggle against the judicial coup against all citizens of our country in the person of Can Atalay will continue uninterrupted, and our action plan will be shared with the public in the coming days,” TİP posted on X.
The Turkish defense ministry said on Friday that nine soldiers were killed in an attempted intrusion in one of its bases in northern Iraq.
Turkey has operated several dozen military posts in northern Iraq for the past 25 years in its decades-old war against the outlawed PKK, a group designated by Turkey and much of the international community as a terrorist organization.