A detention warrant has been issued for pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Şanlıurfa deputy and spokesperson Osman Baydemir, Turkish media reports said on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear on which charges the detention warrant was issued for Baydemir.
On Monday, HDP Siirt deputy Besime Konca, who was released by a Batman court on May 3 after spending five months in pre-trial detention, was arrested again due to an arrest warrant issued by another Batman court on May 8.
Meanwhile, 5 people have been arrested in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa on charges of insulting Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and allegedly making the propaganda of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkish media reports said on Tuesday.
A total of 26 people were recently detained in an anti-PKK operation in several districts of Şanlıurfa. While 21 of these people were released on judicial probation on Tuesday, five of them were arrested.
Scores of people in Turkey have been detained or arrested or are under investigation on allegations of insulting Erdoğan or making terror propaganda. As of the end of 2016, at least 10,000 people were under investigation on suspicion of terrorist propaganda and insulting senior state officials on social media.
According to figures released by Turkey’s Ministry of Interior Affairs in December, 3,710 social media users had been investigated in the last six months of 2016, of whom 1,656 were arrested. A total of 1,203 of those investigations resulted in releases on probation.
Turkey has stepped up its crackdown on Kurds and Kurdish politicians in recent months. Trustees have been appointed to dozens of municipalities in the country’s predominantly Kurdish Southeast, while hundreds of local Kurdish politicians as well as 11 HDP deputies including the party’s co-chairs have been arrested on terror charges. The developments have attracted widespread criticism from the region and Western countries. (turkishminute.com) May 30, 2017
