Turkey orders detention of 17 jailed pending trial for 2014 Kobane protests

The court released three other detainees subject to judicial supervision in same case. They were among 82 people ordered detained a week ago. The court ordered the detentions in the scope of an ongoing investigation into the political party’s alleged involvement in violent protests in 2014.

The protesters in Turkey mostly the southeast Kurdish accused Turkish army of standing by as members of the ISIL armed group besieged Kobane in plain view just across the Syrian border in October 2014 leading to the deaths of 37 people.

Turkish authorities said the armed group — the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, incited the protests and also informed that the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) supported them. However, HDP, the third-largest party denies links to terrorism.

Authorities have now removed all of HDP’s provincial mayors who were elected in March last year. The party currently holds six town and district municipalities, compared with the 65 it won in total last year.

Police arrested the politicians and officials on September 25, 2020 in connection with an Ankara prosecutor’s investigation of their alleged involvement in protests in southeastern Turkey. Also, the Interior Ministry informed about the removal of the mayor of northeastern province Kars, Ayhan Bilgen from his position, who was among those remanded in custody.

The 2014 Kobane protests, between October 6 and October 8, were a reaction to the Turkish government’s policy at the time toward the ISIS siege of the north Syrian town of Kobane and began as an expression of solidarity with the Kurds of Kobane.

Most of the 20 people accused in the present case were at the time serving members of the central executive committee of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, the party’s main decision-making body. The investigation by Ankara prosecutor accuses them of attempting to destroy the unity of the state, membership in the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and carrying out activities on its behalf, spreading terrorist propaganda, inciting and praising criminal activity, and inciting murder.

The prosecutor has also applied to lift the parliamentary immunity of seven members of parliament from the party to enable their prosecution in the same criminal investigation.

Two HDP legislators have been ejected from parliament since elections in 2018 after being convicted on terrorism charges. Eleven others were ejected in the previous term.

Former HDP leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag have been in jail since 2016 on charges related to the Kobane protests.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the PKK took up arms against the state in 1984.

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