Diyarbakir protests timid as Kurds wary of post-coup crackdown
Furious over the arrest of their co-mayors, the Kurds of Diyarbakir are protesting by the thousands, but the crowds would be larger if the population weren't exhausted by the ongoing conflict with the Turkish government and afraid of being targeted.
Turkey’s Kurds protested the detentions of the co-mayors of Diyarbakir, the country’s largest Kurdish-majority city, for a second day, even as a government-imposed internet outage across the mainly Kurdish southeast provinces disrupted efforts to organize.
In Diyarbakir, Selahatttin Demirtas, the co-chair of the largest pro-Kurdish bloc, the Peoples' Democratic party (HDP) vowed to keep up the protests until Gultan Kisanak and Firat Anli, both arrested Oct. 25 on terrorism charges, are set free. Addressing several hundred people gathered outside the Diyarbakir city hall on Oct. 27, Demirtas accused the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of waging a “dirty war” against the Kurds. Demirtas said the government does not respect “justice, the constitution, nor political ethics.” The only means “to defend against such oppression is to resist, to escalate the struggle,” asserted Demirtas.
A local prosecutor in Diyarbakir filed charges against Demirtas soon after his speech claiming, among other things, that he had incited the pubic to disobey the law and insulted Turkey's president. Demirtas is already facing scores of similar criminal charges, and there is widespread speculation that he too could eventually end up behind bars.
But the public response to the HDP’s daily calls has been lukewarm, as gloatingly noted by pro-government outlets. “The people told the HDP enough already,” blared the pro-AKP daily Star newspaper on its front page. Like many other publications, the paper claimed that the Kurds were spurning the party’s calls to action. “Even [Diyarbakir] municipal workers did not heed them,” Star said.
