Turkey’s top prosecutor, who filed a closure case against the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in March 2021, paid a visit to the nationalist İYİ (Good) Party parliamentary group on Friday, in a move that raised questions about his impartiality, Turkish Minute reported.
No information has been revealed about the content of the visit paid by Bekir Şahin, the chief public prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals, to the İYİ Party group in parliament or with which party officials he met.
Şahin made his final case concerning closure of the HDP at the Constitutional Court, which has yet to make a decision. He accused the party of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which 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.
The HDP had to run in the May parliamentary elections under the banner of the Green Left Party (YSP) to circumvent the risks that could have emerged due to its possible closure.
In addition to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his election partner, Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), İYİ Party leader Meral Akşener also accused the HDP of links to the PKK.
Thousands of supporters and dozens of the HDP’s current and former officials are currently in jail on contentious charges that have strained Turkey’s relations with its allies in the West.
