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Vol. 81/No. 24 June 19, 2017
Ankara steps up attacks on HDP, Kurds
BY JIM BRADLEY
The Turkish government has threatened to strip the citizenship of three
members of parliament — Faysal Sariyildiz, Tugba Hezer Ozturk and Ozdal
Ucer — leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), based in the
country’s Kurdish region, intensifying Ankara’s campaign against the
struggle of the Kurds for their national rights.
Their names are on a list of 130 similarly targeted people released by
the government June 5, including other members of the HDP, along with
members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the reactionary Islamic
State and the Fetullah Gulen sect that Ankara says was behind a failed
military coup last July.
The three HDP deputies, who are all currently out of the country, are
being tried in absentia on frame-up “terrorism” charges. They will lose
their citizenship “if they do not return to Turkey within three months,”
CNN reported.
Since July, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has arrested around
10,000 HDP supporters, including mayors and city officials from the
Kurdish region. On May 30 the government imposed a curfew on 43 villages
in the area as part of the Turkish military’s offensive against the
banned PKK.
There are some 15 million Kurds in Turkey, part of the larger Kurdish
region that also encompasses parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran. The
oppressed Kurdish people are the largest national grouping worldwide
without their own state.
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