Erdogan Keeps His Promise to Arrest Leaders of Pro-Kurdish, Pro-Christian Party

[TomSea]

Erdogan Keeps His Promise to Arrest Leaders of Pro-Kurdish, Pro-Christian Party
By Frances Martel
Breitbart
Posted 2016-11-06 01:01 GMT

After repeatedly accusing its members of being "supported by a terrorist organization" and "backing suicide bombers," the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has finally arrested the senior leadership of the Kurd-friendly People's Democratic Party (HDP) in a midnight raid.

Police whisked party leaders Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş away from their homes in the capital, Ankara, and Kurdish regional capital Diyarbakir in the middle of the night, as well as detaining Diyarbakır deputy Nursel Aydoğan and Şırnak deputy Leyla Birlik, among others, for their ties to the party. Prosecutors are now working to turn the detentions into permanent arrests, requiring a trial. Reuters places the number of HDP legislators detained in the past 24 hours at "a dozen."

Dramatic mobile phone footage of the arrests has surfaced online. In the first video, authorities appear to prevent the filming of Demirtaş's arrest. In the second, legislator İdris Baluken is heard shouting to police in Turkish, "Get your hands off me! I represent thousands of votes. You can't shove my head and take me like that."

The public arrest of an opposition leader like Demirtaş strongly resembles another arrest of a charismatic center-left leader on vague "terrorism" charges: the arrest of Popular Will opposition party leader Leopoldo López in Venezuela in 2014. López remains in prison, his health status unknown.

Read More At: http://aina.org/news/20161105210113.htm