Top Turkish court accepts revised indictment to ban pro-Kurdish party
Turkey’s Constitutional Court on Monday accepted a case seeking the closure of the nation’s second-largest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), after a top prosecutor revised and resubmitted an indictment alleging members collude with terrorists.
ISTANBUL — Turkey’s second-largest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), faces a closure threat once more after the nation’s Constitutional Court accepted an indictment seeking to ban hundreds of members from holding political office on terror-related charges.
The original version of the indictment was filed earlier this year and rejected on procedural grounds. On June 7, Turkey’s Chief Public Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation Bekir Sahin resubmitted a revised document, which judges in the nation’s top court unanimously accepted on Monday, opening the way for a trial that could shutter the HDP in the coming months.
In the 843-page indictment, Sahin alleges the HDP is seeking to “destroy the unity of the state” and fosters ties with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a designated terrorist group in Turkey, the United States and the European Union, a claim HDP officials deny.
Through evidence that has yet to be made public, the prosecutor demands the full closure of the HDP, a five-year political ban on 451 party members and, after a review by Constitutional Court judges, the possible freezing of HDP bank accounts through which the party is expected to receive about $7.7 million in 2021 from the Turkish treasury.
