TWO months ago Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of Turkey’s left-wing, pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), was celebrating his party’s success in its first-ever national election campaign. The HDP won 13% of the vote and cost the pro-Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party control of parliament. Last week, Mr Demirtas and his fellow HDP deputies sent the government an unusual request: to lift their parliamentary immunity. The previous day Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a co-founder of AK, had demanded the arrest of parliamentarians with “terrorist links”. The HDP wanted to show it had nothing to hide. “We have never supported violence, terrorism or racism,” said Mr Demirtas. “We won’t bow to pressure and blackmail.”
Mr Erdogan’s demands are part of a strategy to gain political advantage by marginalising Turkey’s Kurds. Last month, when Turkey began bombing Islamic State (IS) and allowing NATO warplanes to use its air bases for attacks, Western allies hoped Mr Erdogan had understood the gravity of the IS threat. But Mr Erdogan has used bombing IS as cover for much heavier air strikes against the Kurdish Workers’...
from The Economist: Europe http://ift.tt/1M7ZAQB
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