Istanbul police on Thursday detained 10 district officials and members of the opposition pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in raids across the megacity, Duvar news site reported.
HDP’s Üsküdar district co-chairwoman Aysel Özbey, provincial organisation co-spokeswoman Besra İşsever and journalist Saliha Aras are among those who have been taken into police custody following early morning raids to their Istanbul homes, it said.
The reason for the detentions is not known, Duvar said, but HDP İstanbul provincial chairman Ferhat Encü has said the move was part of an effort to dissolve the HDP, Turkey’s third largest party in parliament, through judicial means.
The government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has since 2016 intensified a crackdown on the HDP, with almost all mayors elected from the party being dismissed and replaced by government-appointed trustees while hundreds of members have been jailed on terror charges, including the party’s former co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ.
Ankara accuses the HDP of harbouring sympathy and acting in the interest of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group that has been at war for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey for four decades. The HDP denies the charges.
The party is also facing a closure threat as part of an indictment, which is also seeking to ban hundreds of party members from holding political office on terror-related charges.
“We woke up to another political massacre operation in Istanbul,” Encü said in a Twitter post. “The HDP, which cannot be dealt with politically, is being attempted to be dissolved through the judiciary.”
Hurriyet Daily News