Prosecutor launches investigation on HDP lawmakers

ANKARA

The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation against Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Deputy Dirayet Dilan Taşdemir on charges of being a member of an armed terrorist organization after Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu claimed that she visited northern Iraq’s Gara region where 13 Turks were killed.

A statement from the prosecutor’s office said on Feb. 21 that they accepted Soylu’s statements as a notice for the investigation.

“After the program broadcast on a national television channel on Feb. 20, 2021, an investigation has been initiated over the statements made about Peoples’ Democratic Party 27th Term Deputy Dirayet Dilan Taşdemir, who was reported to have visited the Gara region of Iraq, where PKK / KCK armed terrorist organization members are located and where the Turkish Armed Forces conducted a [military] operation, for being a member of an armed terrorist organization,” the statement said.

A PKK member, who entered the group in 2017 and then surrendered to the state, confessed that Taşdemir was in the Gara region, Soylu stated on Feb. 20 speaking on nationwide TV channel A Haber.

The PKK member said that he got in a car in Gara with a person who is said to be Taşdemir, according to the minister.

Minister Soylu earlier had said at the parliament that a lawmaker visited the Gara region, but he did not name the MP at that time.

Refuting the claim of the interior minister, Taşdemir said, “ The Minister of the Interior of this country made a statement giving my name, supposedly based on the expressions of a person. We’ll show that it’s a big lie and slander.”

HDP Co-Chair Pervin Buldan said that all of the photos displayed by Soylu were photos from the period of the solution process.

“All of the pictures that the interior minister showed in the TV program last night are photographs that were taken in Qandil where we went within the knowledge and approval of [President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan during the peace process. I will explain more in our group meeting on Tuesday,” Buldan tweeted.

Meanwhile, a summary of proceedings for nine HDP lawmakers is being prepared with the demand of lifting the immunity of these deputies, including Buldan, on the grounds of Kobane incidents.

The HDP MPs were accused with 28 charges, including “Disrupting the unity and integrity of the State.”

In 2014, protests that were sparked by the seizure of the Syrian town of Kobane by ISIL militants turned violent across Turkey after the YPG group in the town accused the Turkish government of being inactive against the ISIL attacks.

The 16th Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals also upheld the prison sentence of two years and six months given to HDP Kocaeli Deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu.

Gergerlioğlu was sentenced to prison before he was elected as a deputy in the case filed for “making propaganda for a terrorist organization.”