For the second year, the United States has denied a controversial Kurdish leader a visa to speak at an event at the presitigious National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
“The visa, it was actually refused,” Salih Muslim said in a video.
A prosecutor in southern Turkey has prepared an indictment seeking a jail term of up to five years for the co-leaders of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
In a statement released Sunday, the Adana Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said charges of promoting terrorist propaganda and insulting the state had been laid against Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, as well as Meral Danis Bestas, a party lawmaker for Adana.
A long-running uprising in Turkey’s Kurdish regions was temporarily overshadowed by the July 15 coup attempt. The PKK first took up arms against the government over 30 years ago, and the fighting has led to more than 40,000 deaths. Neither the PKK nor the Turkish government is looking to reconcile following the end of a ceasefire last year. Kurds in eastern Turkey, where most live, are facing a state of emergency, Toprak said. “Entire cities and regions have been razed,” he added. “There are 500,000 internally displaced Kurds.”
Backed by a helicopter, counter-terror squads raided HDP offices in Istanbul’s central Beyoglu district at 3 a.m. (0000 GMT) as armoured vehicles were deployed nearby, the Dogan news agency reported.
More than a million people have attended a pro-democracy rally held in Istanbul in response to Turkey’s failed coup attempt last month.
The massive rally on Sunday united the country’s president, the prime minister and two opposition party leaders around a single issue for the first time in years.
The Turkish government is blocking access for independent investigations into mass abuses against civilians across southeast Turkey, Human Rights Watch said today. The alleged abuses include unlawful killings of civilians, mass forced civilian displacement, and widespread unlawful destruction of private property. The government should promptly grant the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights permission to enter the area and investigate according to its standards.
Kurdistan is divided between 4 countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. It has been the scene of several regional conflicts over the past 25 years. This has led to a complex political and military situation in each country where several political parties are defending Kurdish people rights, and are controlling their own military groups. The conflicts are also widely influenced by the two main regional powers, Turkey and Iran, which all have their client factions. The article and the map are not an exhaustive list of all groups involved, but aim at explaining who are the main Kurdish actors in each country and what their relationship is
A Turkish parliamentary committee approved a bill that strips deputies of immunity from prosecution, paving the way for legislation that members of the pro-Kurdish opposition say is designed to target them and suppress dissent.
