HDP pledges to submit petitions to lift prosecution immunity

ANKARA

Selahattin Demirtaş, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), addresses the Turkish parliament in Ankara on July 28, 2015. AFP Photo

Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş said 80 deputies from his party will submit petitions to the parliament for their immunity from prosecution to be lifted. 

“It’s the people who open and close the parties. People who voted for the HDP 13 percent today can give one percent tomorrow. We’ll respect and assume our party is closed. Do you say immunity? Tomorrow, we’ll file a petition to the parliament with 80 other colleagues in order to strip us of our immunity from prosecution,” Demirtaş said at his parliamentary group meeting on July 28.

Demirtaş asked the ruling party members if they would do the same. “Are you in? Let’s strip [our] immunity all together if you are not afraid of it,” he said.

The HDP co-chair suggested that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has staged a “palace coup” against the national will after June 7 elections.  

A “civil junta” has seized the state in Turkey, Demirtaş said, questioning the government’s authority to make decisions that “carry the country into war.”

“Where do they get the authority to make high level appointments, expenses from discretionary fund?” he asked.

Demirtaş said the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is not a single government and cannot make decisions single-handedly.  He also criticized the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) of being a partner in “the coup.”