, aimed at ending the 40-year conflict between the state and the outlawed group.){kind=link}
Turkish authorities’ crackdown on Kurds, including political figures and journalists, is continuing amid ongoing peace talks between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), aimed at ending the 40-year conflict between the state and the outlawed group.
The PKK, designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, has been waging a bloody war in Turkey’s southeast since 1984. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict.
Police conducted early-morning raids on several homes in southeastern Mardin province, detaining Ziynet Algan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions Party’s (DBP) former Nusaybin district chair, along with Mithat Yılmaz, Lokman Aslan and others, according to a report by the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya news agency on Friday.
The Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA) also reported on Friday that Birsen Orhan, the former co-mayor of the eastern city of Tunceli from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), who was removed from office in November on terrorism charges, was given a suspended sentence of five months.
Orhan was detained on the same day she was removed from office after participating in protests over the mayors’ dismissal and was under house arrest. A Tunceli court had ruled to lift Orhan’s house arrest and travel ban on January 15.
The court on Friday sentenced the former co-mayor for “publicly provoking the commission of an offense,” considering the prosecutor’s argument that her use of the words “occupation” and “struggle” during her speeches at the protests posed “a threat.”
Meanwhile, Kurdish journalists Ali Barış Kurt and Öznur Değer were also detained on Friday, according to Mezopotamya.
Kurt’s detention followed the upholding of his prison sentence of more than two years by the Supreme Court of Appeals for social media posts and journalistic activities, while JINNEWS reporter Değer, who was beaten, handcuffed behind her back and forcibly removed from her home by the police, was referred to court with a request for arrest.
The authorities’ continued arrests and efforts to silence those advocating for Kurdish rights raise questions about the sincerity of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in addressing the longstanding Kurdish conflict and deepen concerns about the future of the negotiations.
Critics of the peace talks say the public is given little information about the discussions’ content. They question what concessions Turkey will offer to persuade the PKK to lay down its arms and what steps the government will take to improve the cultural, political and linguistic rights of the Kurds, who have been fighting for these rights for many years.
In 2015 a peace attempt initiated by Ankara broke down, unleashing a wave of violence in the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeast.