Gergerlioğlu refused to vacate his seat in the Assembly after the vote and camped in the Assembly building for a few days to protest this anti-democratic move. AKP representatives, known for their thuggish background and behavior, attacked him in the chamber and tried dragging him out. Finally, during an early morning prayer, the authorities broke into the Assembly and dragged him out without giving him even the chance of putting his shoes on.
Erdoğan’s fear of losing the upcoming elections has peaked. Each new poll shows the government coalition parties, Erdoğan’s Islamic AKP, and the nationalist, racist, Nazi MHP party, are losing votes at very dangerous levels.
The only option for Erdoğan at this time is to silence the opposition at all costs. At his crosshairs stand the progressive, pro-Kurdish HDP, the Democratic Peoples’ Party. With whipped-up nationalism and racism in coordination with the coalition partner, the Nazi MHP, the religious conservative capitalist AKP targets the Kurds, who are 25% of the population, as terrorists.
With trumped-up charges, the president of HDP is already in prison. After reviewing his case, the European Human Rights Court twice ordered Turkey to release him immediately. However, Demirtaş, a much-loved leader of the HDP, is still in prison because his release would unite the progressives and the Kurds and give the opposition strength. As of April 2nd, 2021, Demirtaş has been incarcerated for more than 100 days against all notions of justice and legal orders of release.
Human Rights Watch director Hugh Williams for the Central Asia region emphasized last year that the Erdoğan government was in a vendetta against Demirtaş and demanded his immediate release.
If HDP survives for the upcoming elections, it will be the biggest obstacle both the racists and the Islamists will face because, with the obvious failure of the ruling AKP, the HDP doubled its voter and support base. From the government’s perspective, HDP has become an existential problem.
The HDP web site explains the imprisonment of the representatives as,
“As of today, there are seven elected HDP MPs, dozens of elected mayors, and at least 6,000 party members and activists in prison in Turkey. The vast majority of these individuals are accused of terrorism or other anti-state offenses— simply for exercising their democratic rights. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that some of these political detentions “pursued the predominant ulterior purpose of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate.”
Last night, the number of elected representatives in prison increased when the latest MP from HDP Gergerlioğlu was arrested.
Last month the AKP and its junior partner MHP voted in the Assembly to lift the immunity of Gergerlioğlu to send him to prison. His crime was to retweet a news item from a public news source.
Gergerlioğlu refused to vacate his seat in the Assembly after the vote and camped in the Assembly building for a few days to protest this anti-democratic move. AKP representatives, known for their thuggish background and behavior, attacked him in the chamber and tried dragging him out. Finally, during an early morning prayer, the authorities broke into the Assembly and dragged him out without giving him even the chance of putting his shoes on.
Parallel to these bogus charges, imprisonment, and harassment, the government’s junior partner, the Nazi MHP, asked the Constitutional Court to shut down the HDP permanently. The racist Nazi ideology cannot tolerate even the existence of minorities in Turkey such as the Kurds, the Jews, Christians, Greeks, Assyrians, Alevis, or others. MHP demands everyone to pledge allegiance to the Turkish race and leave the country if anyone’s loyalty is suspect.
However, the high court found technical problems with the request to close down the political party and sent it back. The leader of MHP then demanded the Constitutional Court be shut down for not immediately taking the case.
The police came to Gergerlioğlu’s home last night to take him to prison for the open, free news article he shared from an open, public news source.
Sendika.org News (MB)