SILIVRI: Turkish police fired tear gas and plastic bullets on Monday at pro-Kurdish protesters who had gathered in support of opposition lawmakers who had been removed from parliament.

Dozens of people rallied in Silivri, north-west Turkey, after the parliament barred a deputy from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and two from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) from serving in the assembly.

The rally, billed as a “march” for democracy, was tense, and police also used shields to prevent people from joining it, AFP correspondents said.

At least 10 people were detained.

The mandates of Leyla Guven and Musa Farisogullari of the HDP as well as the CHP’s Enis Berberoglu were scrapped on June 4.

Organisers plan to hold more such rallies this week in different cities, edging closer to Ankara for a final rally there.

“We will march until peace, freedom and democracy are restored,” HDP co-chair Pervin Buldan told the protesters.

HDP lawmaker Musa Piroglu blocked a road with his wheelchair to prevent a water-cannon truck from chasing protesters, saying: “You will have to crush me to pass!”

HDP militants also gathered in Hakkari in the south-east to protest the replacement of dozens of mayors by government-appointed trustees since local elections in 2019.

“The trustee policy is the biggest coup against democracy,” HDP co-chair Mithat Sancar told the crowd.

Sancar said they were rallying for the three MPs removed as well as “for Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas who have been unfairly and illegally jailed”.

Ex-HDP leaders Yuksekdag and Demirtas were jailed in November 2016 as the government cracked down on Turkey’s second-largest opposition party.

“The will of the Kurdish people is violated. We don’t accept it,” HDP MP Zeynel Ozen said. “Even if in the end only one person remains, this resistance will continue.”

Earlier, a group of some 80 members of the HDP including several legislators departed from the city of Edirne, near the border with Greece, on Monday, while a second group, numbering some 60, left Hakkari, near the border with Iraq, to demand an end to the government crackdown.

The two groups are scheduled to reach Ankara on Saturday, where they plan to hold a protest at a park near the Parliament.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government accuses the party of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. The HDP denies the accusation.

Police also blocked the group in Edirne from starting their protest from outside of a prison where former HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas is incarcerated.

Last month, authorities detained four elected HDP mayors and replaced them with government-appointed trustees.

Some 45 other mayors have been removed from office since local elections in March 2019, and 21 of them have been imprisoned on terror-related charges.

Several other HDP lawmakers have also been jailed alongside Demirtas.

“These obstructions, these bans will never deter us. They will never prevent our struggle for peace, democracy, justice and freedom,” said HDP co-chairwoman Pervin Buldan, as she launched the protest from Edirne.

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2020