After days of protest against the withdrawal of his parliamentary seat, the pro-Kurdish politician Ömer Faruk Gergerlioglu was arrested in the Turkish parliament. Around 100 police officers broke into parliament in the morning and took Gergerlioglu into custody, his party, the pro-Kurdish HDP, announced today. Gegerlioglu was stripped of his immunity on Wednesday due to a final judgment of two and a half years in prison.
He had since refused to leave the parliament building in protest. The withdrawal of the parliamentary mandate and an application for a ban against the HDP on the same day had triggered international criticism.
The DHA news agency reported that Gergerlioglu is now being investigated, among other things, for the illegal assumption of public office and terrorist propaganda. The reason given was that Gergerlioglu had illegally stayed in the parliament building even after losing his mandate, behaved like a member of parliament and published press releases on social networks. Gergerlioglu and other HDP MPs had also shouted terrorist slogans, so the allegation.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses the HDP of being the extended arm of the banned Kurdish Workers‘ Party PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization in Turkey, Europe and the USA. The HDP denies the allegation. The background to the final judgment for terrorist propaganda against Gergerlioglu is a tweet from 2016. The politician criticizes the judgment as politically motivated.
