Turkey arrests three MEPs on security and terrorism charges
Three Turkish progressive opposition MPs have been arrested after they lost their parliamentary status on Thursday after being sentenced for crimes related to national security and terrorism. One of them, Enis Berberoglu, belongs to the Social Democratic People's Republican Party (CHP), the largest opposition party. The other two, Leyla Güven and Musa Farisogullari, are members of the People's Democratic Party (HDP), the left-wing, pro-Kurdish formation that is the third largest force in the House.
Berberoglu has been sentenced by the Supreme Court to five years and 10 months in prison for "revealing state documents", in a case that demonstrated arms trafficking from Turkey to Syria with official backing. Güven and Farisogullari were sentenced to six and nine years respectively for links with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the Kurdish guerrilla movement considered to be terrorist by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Turkish law provides for the loss of MP status in case of a sentence that is incompatible with being a candidate, once the order has been officially read in Parliament, which happened on Thursday.
Turkish law provides for the loss of MP status in case of a sentence that is incompatible with being a candidate, once the order has been officially read in Parliament, which happened on Thursday. Two of the detentions occurred after the Attorney General's Office of Diyarbakır ordered the arrest of Kurdish opposition officials. "I am being arrested," legislator Hakkari Leyla Guven of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) wrote on her Twitter account on Thursday night, as reported by digital Kurdistan24. "Resistance is life," she added, a revolutionary slogan of the Kurdish movement in Turkey.
Enis Berberoglu, a parliamentarian from Istanbul with the main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), and another HDP member from Diyarbakir, Musa Farisogullari, were also arrested. "The Turkish parliament has removed our MP Leyla Güven and Farisoğulları from their status as members of parliament in an illegal move," she said on Thursday on the official HDP Twitter account. "Güven and Farisoğulları represent the will of millions. The revocation of their parliamentary seats will not intimidate us or our people!"
Arrests related to the clergyman Fethullah Gülen
The Turkish police have made new arrests this Friday. At least 68 people have been arrested because of their links to cleric Fethullah Gülen, who authorities accuse of being behind the 2016 coup d'état, Anadolu news agency reported. The arrests come after the Izmir Prosecutor General's Office issued arrest warrants for 31 people after discovering they were using ByLock, the encrypted message application for smartphones. Another 37 people have been arrested for their involvement with Gülen in an investigation by the Ankara Public Prosecutor's Office. Turkey accuses Gülen's supporters of being behind a long campaign to overthrow the state by infiltrating Turkish institutions, in particular the army, police and the judicial system.
