Turkey Rounds Up Erdogan’s Political Opponents as Crackdown Widens

Salahhatin Demirtas, once hailed as the “Kurdish Obama,” among the pro-Kurdish opposition lawmakers held on Friday

A Turkish court placed the two leaders of a major pro-Kurdish opposition party under arrest on Friday in a dramatic widening of a political crackdown that followed July’s failed military coup that will raise concerns about the future of Turkey’s parliamentary democracy.

Police detained the co-chairs of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahhatin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, early on Friday morning along with nine other lawmakers. The measures against pro-Kurdish officials more than three months after president Recep Tayyip Erdogan narrowly survived an attempt by part of the military to seize power on July 15 could also open a new season of conflict with armed Kurdish insurgents. Hours after the arrests, a car bombing reportedly killed at least eight people in the city of Diyarbakir, the largest city in the Kurdish-majority southeast of Turkey.

 

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