29 March 2016•Update: 04 April 2016
ANKARA
Turkish Prime Minister and chairman of the Justice and Development (AK) Party Ahmet Davutoglu said Tuesday that no political party could be the mouthpiece of terror.
"The Peoples’ Democratic Party [HDP] is a party that dedicates itself to terror. We will never let the people's will be crushed under the will of terror barons," the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party chairman said at a parliamentary meeting of party lawmakers in Ankara.
"No one can be the mouthpiece of a terrorist organization [the PKK] killing the people in Turkey, including children, behind the image of doing politics by using the parliament's privilege for deputies", Davutoglu added.
The HDP's co-chair Selahattin Demirtas said in his speech in southeastern province of Diyarbakir on Saturday that his party supported neither terror, terrorists nor war.
Early March, Davutoglu said, without explicitly naming him, that Demirtas was plotting against the country and collaborating with terrorists to "drag Turkey into chaos".
The PKK – also seen as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU – resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015.
Since then, over 350 members of the security forces have been martyred and thousands of PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.
HDP co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag and three other deputies have been threatened with having their parliamentary immunity revoked.
The move sprang from an investigation by the Diyarbakir chief public prosecutor into the speeches of the five deputies on an alleged "declaration of autonomy" during a December meeting of a group affiliated with the party in the southeastern province.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had floated the idea of lifting the immunity of HDP parliamentarians due to the party’s alleged support for terrorism.
The Turkish government submitted the motion to lift HDP MPs' immunity on March 9.
The call to lift the deputies' immunity had the backing of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), while the Republican People’s Party (CHP) opposed it. The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party supports it.
If the Parliamentary Commission approves the measure, the parliament will vote.
The motion to lift the HDP MPs' immunity requires an absolute majority, i.e. 276 votes.
