Turkey’s immunity bill aimed at excluding HDP from politics, party says

ANKARA

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The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said in a statement on June 8 that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s approval of a bill paving the way for the lifting of 152 lawmakers' immunity, was aimed at excluding the Kurdish-issue focused party from politics. 

The HDP said the approval, which was published in the Official Gazette on June 8, was “an anti-constitutional arrangement that specifically aims to exclude the HDP and its MPs from the democratic parliamentary process.”

“We view his timing as an ominous and vindictive message of taking revenge from HDP due to its electoral victory on June 7th a year ago, which prevented the Justice and Development Party (AKP) from forming a majority government and obstructed Erdoğan’s ambitions for a presidential system,” the party said in a statement. 

“It is extremely crucial to also note that Erdoğan ratified the bill, after the place and position of 3,228 judges and prosecutors were changed by a decree on June 5th, 2016. We suspect that Erdoğan ratified the bill only after making the necessary arrangements in the judiciary so that he could control the legal process regarding the prosecution of MPs with the help of judges and prosecutors sympathetic to himself and the AKP,” it added.

The HDP leadership says the lifting of parliamentary immunities is a political decision "in violation of the constitution."