A local from Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party, HDP, was attacked on Thursday.

"An assailant armed with a rifle attacked our office in Izmir" in the west of the country, the party announced in a statement posted on Twitter.

The party specifies that an employee, "Deniz Poyraz, was killed in this attack".

The Izmir governor's office claimed that the perpetrator, "a resigned health worker", was arrested.

The HDP accused the government and the ruling AKP party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of being the "instigators of this brutal attack" because of their violent rhetoric against the pro-Kurdish formation they are striving for. to have it prohibited by justice.

“They killed my daughter,” the victim's grieving mother said in a video posted to Twitter by the HDP, which called for protests against the attack in Izmir and Istanbul.

Bête noire of President Erdogan

The Constitutional Court of Turkey had delayed at the end of March the examination of a request for prohibition of the HDP, accused of "terrorist" activities, due to "procedural flaws", returning the file to the prosecutor for further information . A new indictment was submitted in June to the court, which is due to consider it in the coming days. The third political group in the country, the HDP has described the demand for its ban as a "political putsch".

President Erdogan's pet peeve, the HDP has been the subject of relentless repression since 2016, when its charismatic leader, Selahattin Demirtas, was jailed despite European protests.

The Turkish head of state regularly accuses the HDP of being the "political showcase" of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), classified as a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies and which delivers a bloody guerrilla war against the Turkish state since 1984 in the south-east of the country.

Victim of persecution

Criticism against the HDP has redoubled in intensity after an abortive Turkish military intervention aimed at rescuing 13 hostages at the hands of the PKK in Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of all prisoners in mid-February.

The HDP, which strongly rejects accusations of "terrorist activities", claims to be the victim of persecution because of its opposition to Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The demand for the shutdown of the HDP has sparked concern in Western countries about the rule of law in Turkey, as Ankara seeks to ease its strained relations with the United States and Europe.

Society

Refugee, a Kurdish activist was questioned by French police at the request of Turkey

Miscellaneous

Lyon: four injured after the attack on a Kurdish local

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