ERBIL — Turkish security forces arrested 32 members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) on alleged charges of supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its affiliated armed groups.

Co-chair of HDP Headquarters in Mersin, Badriya Kush, and several members of Akdeniz Municipality Council are among those arrested in accordance with arrest warrants by a court in Mersin.
According to media reports, over 500 policemen took part in the operation to storm the designated locations and bring the accused under detention.
Turkey has designated the PKK as a “terrorist organization”. It currently leads a major military operation against the armed Kurdish group in the border areas of the Kurdistan Region, threatening to launch a new military incursion against the PKK’s offsprings in northeast Syria soon.
Ankara regularly arrests HDP members for alleged links to the PKK. Among them is Selahattin Demirtas, the former co-chair of the party who is imprisoned since 2016. He told T24 in a recent interview from his cell that HDP is not linked to the PKK by any means.
“We would like to make it clear that HDP is not the political wing of the PKK. A party engaged in politics does not need an armed wing,” he said during the interview. [1]