Celal Adan, deputy speaker of the Turkish parliament, has called for the closure of Turkey’s Constitutional Court (AYM) due to its failure so far to issue a ruling shutting down the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the Kronos news website reported.
“We want the closure of the HDP. We also want to the closure of the AYM, which to date has failed to close down the HDP,” Adan, a lawmaker from the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), said at a meeting in İstanbul on Tuesday.
The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been trying to shutter the HDP since March 2021 over its alleged ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkey’s top prosecutor filed a closure case against the HDP in March 2021, accusing it of links to the terrorist organization.
“The HDP was founded by Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the PKK,” said Adan.
The PKK has been waging a bloody war in Turkey’s southeast since 1984 and is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey and much of the international community.
MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, President Erdoğan’s far-right ally, had earlier called for the closure of the AYM at a parliamentary group meeting.
Bahçeli accused the country’s top court of supporting a party that helps traitors and terrorist groups, criticizing the AYM for its rulings removing a freeze on state funds allocated to the HDP, Turkey’s second-largest opposition party.
The head of the Constitutional Court would be the best nominee from the HDP for its presidential candidate in the upcoming election, Bahçeli said.
In a controversial decision in January, the top court deprived the HDP — parliament’s second-largest opposition group — of a key source of funding heading into elections on the grounds that it has links to terrorism.
The court reversed its decision by a majority vote in March, and the party is due to receive 539 million lira ($29 million) in treasury funding this year.
