Turkish regime plans to lift the immunity of 44 parliamentarians who oppose Erdogan
The ruling coalition in Turkey, which includes the “Justice and Development” parties and the “National Movement”, submitted 23 files to the Turkish Parliament, in preparation for dropping the parliamentary immunity of 18 deputies of a party opposing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, thus increasing the number of deputies belonging to the “supporting Peoples’ Democratic Party” For the Kurds, who have been demanding the ruling coalition since the beginning of last year to strip them of their parliamentary seats to 27 deputies, including the party’s co-chair, Parwin Buldan.
Turkish parliament session
The accusation of having links between HDP deputies and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is banned in Turkey, was brought against 18 deputies, including the head of the party’s parliamentary bloc, Meral Danesh Beştaş, the party’s co-spokeswoman, Ebro Günay, and 12 other deputies from various Kurdish-majority cities in Turkey such as Diyarbakir, Şanlıurfa, Mardin and Tunceli (Dersem).
Hundreds of MPs were imprisoned after their parliamentary immunity was revoked, and this means that the authorities stand against their legitimate practice of politics.
It is expected that these files, which will be discussed by Parliament later, will drop the parliamentary immunity of these deputies, paving the way for their imprisonment later on the pretext of having links between them and the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has been waging an armed rebellion against Ankara since the summer of 1984.
Hüseyin Kaçmaz
The arrival of these files to the Turkish parliament coincides with the approach of the local judiciary to decide on a lawsuit against the pro-Kurdish party with the aim of closing it and banning it from practicing its activities on Turkish soil and preventing it from participating in the presidential and parliamentary elections allegedly to be held next year.
A critical session on the closure of the Peoples’ Democratic Party will be held next month, after it was postponed several times, according to what sources from the pro-Kurdish party revealed to Al Arabiya.net.
“The ruling coalition will not be able to ban our party, especially since there are problems between the AKP and the MHP on this issue,” said Erol Katercioglu, a deputy in the Turkish parliament from the Peoples’ Democratic Party.
He added to “Al Arabiya.net” that “the government is trying to manipulate the political space in the country, but I believe that it will not succeed in that.”
With regard to dropping the parliamentary immunity of the party’s deputies, Hüseyin Kaçmaz, a member of the Turkish parliament for the pro-Kurdish party, stressed that “lifting the parliamentary immunity of Kurdish deputies is something that has been repeated in Turkey since the nineties of the last century.”
The government is trying to manipulate the political space in the country, but I don’t think it will succeed in that
Arol Katerji
He added, in statements to our reporters that “hundreds of MPs were imprisoned after their parliamentary immunity was revoked, and this means that the authorities stand against their legitimate practice of politics,” adding that “lifting the parliamentary immunities of our MPs is illegal and aims to weaken our party.”
And last year, the Turkish Ministry of the Interior demanded the lifting of the parliamentary immunity of 9 deputies from the pro-Kurdish party, and thus the number of deputies belonging to this party and the ruling coalition demanding the dropping of their parliamentary immunity since last year rose to 27 after the Turkish parliament revealed requests aimed at canceling the membership of 18 deputies. others earlier this month.
He continued, “All requests to lift immunity were based on our representatives’ utterance of words such as Kurds, Kurdistan, equality, and so on, during their parliamentary interventions or when addressing their supporters, a matter in which the ruling coalition found something of terrorism, but our deputies did not commit any tangible crime.”
Also, during the past year 2021, the ruling coalition demanded the lifting of the parliamentary immunity of 17 deputies of the pro-Kurdish party, including its co-chair, Medhat Sanger.
With the current files that aim to drop the parliamentary immunity of 27 MPs from the Peoples’ Democratic Party, the number of MPs that Ankara has wanted for nearly two years to strip from this constitutional right has reached 44 MPs from the same party.
