Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
The Socialists and Democrats of the European Parliament have condemned the recent crackdown on the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), in response to yesterday's news that the Turkish Public Prosecutor has taken his latest case to the Constitutional Court to shut down this opposition party.
  Last week, the court already froze the HDP's access to a bank account through which it obtained state funding.
This is according to a statement issued by the Socialist and Democratic Parties bloc in the European Parliament and distributed on Wednesday in Brussels, and we received a copy of it, “The Peoples’ Democratic Party is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament. It won 12% of the vote in the 2018 general elections and owns 56 of the 579 seats in Parliament. .
  He has been increasingly targeted by the Turkish authorities for several years. As a result, thousands of party members, executives, deputies, local councillors and mayors have been prosecuted on charges mainly related to terrorism, and more recently, there has been a full onslaught by prosecutors in multiple court cases.
This adds to the continued detention of former HDP co-chairs since November 2016, Figen Yuksekdağ, and Selahattin Demirtaş, opposition leader and former presidential candidate.

Nacho Sanchez, the European Parliament's rapporteur on Turkey, said:

We call on the Turkish authorities to stop the crackdown on the HDP. It is a peaceful, democratically elected party and should be allowed to operate freely and without intimidation from the government. Its dissolution would be a major blow to democracy and a violation of many fundamental freedoms and rights, such as freedom of association, freedom of expression and the right to vote.

There is no doubt that this latest attempt to silence the HDP is related to the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections in Turkey. The plan is to shut down the HDP, radically limit the electoral choices of millions of voters, and politically ban the entire HDP leadership in order to prevent Founding of any potential new party.
  Not only is it illegal, but it's also a huge political mistake. If the HDP is ordered to shut down, no international independent observer delegation will be able to come to Turkey and say the elections were fair.
  This would also push Turkey away from the European Union and lead to a further decline in its current authoritarian trend.”
Yesterday, the Public Prosecutor asked the Turkish Constitutional Court to ban the Peoples' Democratic Party, the third most represented party in the Turkish parliament, on the pretext of "terrorism," according to the official Anadolu Agency.

The Public Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation, Bakr Shaheen, accused the Peoples' Democratic Party of being "organically" linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ankara classifies as a "terrorist" organization, claiming that the party's members act as a recruitment office for the PKK.
On the other hand, a spokesman for the HDP told AFP: The party has a month to submit an oral defense.

It is noteworthy that the approval of two-thirds of the 15 members of the Constitutional Court is sufficient to ban the main pro-Kurdish party.

Last Thursday, the Constitutional Court suspended the public financial allocations provided to the party, and the decision to disqualify the party was approved by a majority of (8) votes in favor and (7) against.

(539) million Turkish liras, (28.7) million dollars, were to be given as general aid to the HDP this year, a third of which is by January 10.

Recently, an unprecedented escalation has emerged by the Justice and Development regime against all opposition forces, to exclude them before holding the fateful elections, which are expected to exclude Erdogan and his party.

The Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party decided a few days ago to run for the presidential elections separately from the six-party opposition table in Turkey, in a move that may block the way for the presidential winner to be decided in the first round.

The co-chair of the HDP Pervin Buldan said: The party decided to announce its presidential candidate as soon as possible, according to Hurriyet newspaper.