Turkish government criticizes foreign envoys at HDP meeting

ANKARA

DHA photo

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag has criticized a group of foreign diplomats for attending a People’s Democratic Party (HDP) parliamentary group meeting on Nov. 8 after its two co-leaders and eight other deputies were arrested on terrorism charges.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, the minister condemned the envoys for supporting the HDP by attending the meeting, while their governments failed to show support for Turkey’s battle against “terrorism.”      

Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım also criticized the European representatives. 

“The ambassadors’ duty is not to support separatists, it is to respect the sovereign rights of the country in which they work. We expect them to practice their duties within the framework of their responsibilities,” he told journalists in Ankara. 

“We do not accept this picture,” Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said at a ceremony at the Gendarmerie and Coast Guard Academy in Ankara. “We do not accept that some European countries’ representatives support an understanding that is nested within a terrorist organization.”      

The HDP meeting was attended by the ambassadors of Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg, in addition to the Turkey delegation representatives of Austria, Greece, Finland and the EU.  

The HDP focuses on the Kurdish issue.