News / Turkey

Turkish prime minister calls for lifting Kurdish MPs immunity

Wednesday, 09 March 2016 9:06 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 10 March 2016 1:13 AM ]

Selahattin Demirtas (L) and Figen Yuksekdag, co-chairs of Turkey’s Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) (Photo by AFP)

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has called on parliament to revoke the immunity of senior pro-Kurdish opposition deputies so they can be charged for association with armed terrorists.

On Wednesday, the prime minister’s office filed a request to lift the immunity of Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag and deputies Selma Irmak, Sirri Sureyya Onder and Ertugrul Kurkcu.

"The attitudes of those who exploit 'podium immunity' and offend the shared conscience cannot be assessed within (the framework of) immunity," Davutoglu was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has on various occasions claimed that HDP is an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which Turkey deems as a terrorist group.

Referring to the HDP’s last year election success Demirtas told reporters earlier in the week that, "Erdogan is personally angry with us, especially me and a few other friends. He is...driven by feelings of revenge."

Demirtas stands for negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been branded a terrorist organization by Turkey, to find a solution to a conflict that has claimed the lives of some 40,000 people. The PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s.

Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale campaign against the PKK in its southern border region in the past few months.

The operations began in the wake of a deadly July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc. More than 30 people died in the attack, which the Turkish government blamed on the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.

After the bombing, the PKK militants, who accuse the government in Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, prompting the Turkish military operations.

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