CYPRIOT communists joined calls today for the immediate release of jailed Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) leaders Selahattin Demirtas, Figen Yuksekdag and others held as political prisoners in Turkey.

The Progressive Party of Working People (Akel) condemned the Turkish state’s “unlawful and political discrimination” of HDP representatives.

In a letter to Turkey’s opposition party, Akel insisted Turkey must abide by European Court of Human Rights ruling which declared that the lifting of parliamentary immunity of 40 HDP MPs in 2016 was unlawful.

HDP co-chair Mithat Sancar said that the court had determined the prosecutions were “a political purge operation and nothing to do with the law,” and those behind bars must now be released.

“Turkey, as a state-member of the Council of Europe, has the obligation to implement this judgement,” Akel’s executive committee said in a statement.

“The fact that over the last decade the HDP has grown and become established as a political front that could embrace not only the Kurdish movement, but also a broad spectrum of political forces in Turkey, was perceived as a threat,” by the authoritarian Turkish state, it added.

Some 20,000 members and party activists have been detained since 2016, with 10,000 of them jailed. 

More than 200 elected officials, including MPs, have been imprisoned with more than 50 elected mayors removed from their posts and replaced with government-appointed trustees.

The trial of 108 leading HDP politicians is under way, with the Turkish state holding them responsible for the deaths of 57 of their own supporters killed by security forces and government-allied paramilitaries during 2014 protests.

Akel expressed solidarity with Mr Demirtas and Ms Yuksekdag, applauding the “struggle to achieve the release of HDP leaders ad activists and to pursue your political activity freely.”