Turkey’s Constitutional Court has voted to ban the country’s largest pro-Kurdish party on charges of connections to a terrorist organization PKK[1].
Turkey’s chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya argued that the Democratic Society Party (DTP) took orders from the [2] (PKK).
The DTP is the latest in a series of pro-Kurdish parties to have been closed down in Turkey.
The case has been criticised by the EU, which Turkey hopes to join.
The 11 judges in the Constitutional Court ruled that the DTP had become a “focal point of activities against the indivisible unity of the state, the country and the nation”, court president Hasim Kilic told reporters.
He said DTP leaders Ahmet Turk and Aysel Tugluk had been stripped of parliamentary immunity and banned from politics for five years along with 35 other party members.
All party assets would be seized by the treasury, Mr Kilic added.
The DTP holds 21 seats in Turkey’s 550-member parliament.
Some 40,000 people have died since the PKK launched an armed campaign in 1984. However, the government has recently sought to improve ties with the Kurdish minority.
Analysts say the court’s ruling could derail the government’s initiative.
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*edited
BBC