Police officers from the counterterrorism unit of the İstanbul Police Department raided the Beyoğlu district building of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) early on Friday and detained five of its members.
Media reports say riot police and special ops teams also participated in the raid, which took place at around 7 a.m. Police officers arrived in armored vehicles and were backed by helicopters.
HDP Beyoğlu branch Co-chair Rukiye Demir and four others were detained during the raid, reports say.
The police’s search of the building lasted several hours. According to media reports, the raid was conducted as part of an investigation into the activities of the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H) — an affiliate of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — in İstanbul’s Beyoğlu and Şişli districts.
Several HDP district officials were also previously detained in police raids that have being conducted since the June 7 parliamentary election. The HDP accuses the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government of seeking to punish it for its success in the inconclusive June election that deprived the ruling AK Party of its single-party majority in Parliament.
The renewed hostilities have wrecked efforts to establish lasting peace and have sparked some of the worst clashes in the 29-year-old PKK insurgency. Deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union, the PKK launched its armed campaign for a Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. The conflict has cost the country more than 40,000 lives.