Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party said Thursday that police had detained at least 99 minors in January over protests tied to a Syrian government offensive targeting Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria, calling for a parliamentary investigation, Agence France-Presse reported.
In a petition to parliament’s Human Rights Inquiry Commission, eight lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) said at least 99 minors were detained in connection with the protests. The party said 25 of them were arrested by a court.
The DEM Party said prosecutors opened investigations on suspicion of “disseminating the propaganda of a terrorist organization” in social media posts that the party said should be protected under freedom of expression rules.
The party cited the case of a 16-year-old detained in İzmir over a hair-braiding video and a song posted online. The DEM Party said the teen was subjected to a strip-search at the city’s juvenile detention facilities.
Hair braiding became a symbolic gesture of solidarity with Syrian Kurds last month as Damascus pressed an offensive in northeastern Syria to reassert its authority, sparking protests among Kurds in Turkey.
During the Syria operation, social media carried clips of women braiding their hair in response to a video showing a Syrian soldier holding a braid he claimed to have cut from a Kurdish woman fighter, a claim that could not be independently verified.
Turkish authorities responded with a crackdown on such posts.
The DEM Party alleged some minors were barred from seeing a lawyer for 24 hours, suffered physical violence during detention, were questioned without legal representation present and were pressured to sign documents. It also alleged some were subjected to strip-searches when entering detention facilities, were insulted and had their hair cut without consent.
In the northwestern town of Kocaeli, a nurse was detained on grounds of spreading “terrorist propaganda” but was later released under judicial supervision.
Amedspor, a football club from the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakır, was fined 802,500 Turkish lira, nearly $18,500, for “ideological propaganda” after posting a 20-second braiding clip on its social media accounts. The Turkish Football Federation also imposed a 15-day suspension from all football activity on the club’s president.
