US warns Turkey's HDP dissolution would ‘undermine democracy’

Al-Monitor Staff

Mar 18, 2021

Turkish parliament HDP members — Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu (C, front row with a blue mask), a human rights advocate and lawmaker from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), and his colleagues pose after the Turkish parliament stripped his parliamentary seat, in Ankara, on March 17, 2021. — ADEM ALTAN/AFP via Getty Images

The Biden administration has condemned a Turkish effort to disband one of the country’s largest opposition parties, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

On Wednesday, a Turkish prosecutor filed a case with the Constitutional Court to dissolve the HDP, the parliament’s third-largest party. The indictment accuses the HDP of ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group that both Turkey and the United States have labeled a terrorist organization.