01/10/2020 (Agence Europe) – “We are greatly concerned by the detention warrants issued against 101 members of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) on 25 September and 1 October 2020, notably for their alleged responsibility in the 2014 ‘Kobane protests’”, the Parliamentary Assembly co-rapporteurs for the monitoring of Turkey, Swedish Socialist Thomas Hammarberg and British Conservative John Howell, said today. The arrests come on top of the convictions of the former HDP co-chairs, Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, said the co-rapporteurs, as they called on the Turkish authorities to release the HDP’s elected representatives, protect parliamentary immunity and carry out the ruling from the European Court of Human Rights that called for Demirtaş’s release. They are concerned - as expressed in an Assembly resolution in January 2019 - that opposition parties will be rendered “inoperative” in Turkey. (VL)