ISTANBUL: Thousands of Turkish protesters have been prosecuted in recent years amid a government crackdown on right of assembly, a new report by Turkey’s Human Rights Foundation has revealed. A total of 4,771 violations were recorded in the the four years to 2019, with Turkish prosecutors filing lawsuits against 4,907 people for taking part in public protests, the report
ISTANBUL: Turkey’s Directorate General of Security under the interior ministry has issued a circular banning citizens from filming or recording police officers during demonstrations. The circular, which was revealed by the Progressive Lawyers Association, came just before May 1 Labor and Solidarity Day celebrations across the country. This year, due to the pandemic lockdown,
TURKEY’S opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has called for international solidarity before a trial which has been described as the most important in modern Turkish history opens on Monday.
The HDP, whose 55 MPs make it the third-largest force in the Turkish parliament, is under serious pressure, with 108 leading figures, including former co-chairs Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas, facing life imprisonment on a number of charges.
They have been indicted on 37 counts of murder in the so-called Kobani case, being blamed for calling street protests over government inaction when Isis were holding the largely Kurdish city in northern Syria under siege in 2014.
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On 17 March, a top prosecutor filed a case with Turkey’s Constitutional Court demanding the closure of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), as well as a five-year political ban on more than 600 party members. Around the same time, HDP parliamentarian and prominent human rights advocate Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu was forcibly removed from parliament, and later detained.
These proceedings came just weeks after Turkey’s failed military operations in northern Iraq against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in February and the arrest of more than 700 members and supporters of the HDP in a single day (14 February) on dubious charges of “terrorism”.
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