The pro-PKK Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Diyarbakır deputy Semra Güzel, who may lose her parliamentary immunity due to her relations with the PKK terrorist group, organized a visit to a terrorist camp in northern Iraq, according to the testimony of the terrorist's mother.
Songül Bora, the mother of PKK terrorist Volkan Bora, who had a romantic relationship with the HDP lawmaker, told Adıyaman Public Prosecutor’s Office that Güzel organized the visit to the PKK camp in northern Iraq’s Metina region. She told authorities that the terrorists had blindfolded them on the way to the camp.
The mother also noted that she had begged her son to leave the terrorist group, but the latter rejected her pleas.
She claimed that Güzel had previously tried to deceive her by saying that the terrorist was in rural Adıyaman rather than northern Iraq, to prevent her from convincing her son to leave the terrorist group.
Photos of Güzel with PKK terrorist Volkan Bora were widely circulated in Turkish media last month.
The terrorist, code-named "Koçero Meleti," whom the HDP deputy claimed was her fiance, was one of the perpetrators of two terrorist attacks in Adıyaman province. He was one of the terrorists that killed gendarmerie Cpl. Müsellim Ünal and a soldier named Mücahit Şimşek on June 24, 2016, and a village guard named Yusuf Sönmez on Sept. 9, 2016.
Bora was killed in a counterterrorism operation in Turkey’s southeastern Adıyaman province in 2017.
A report to lift her immunity has been submitted to the Office of the Parliament Speaker, and the joint committee formed by constitution and justice committee lawmakers will debate it Thursday.
Güzel defended the pictures, claiming that she had been engaged to the terrorist and the photos were being used as "propaganda" to target her.
She said they got engaged after a romantic relationship while they were in university and that she was unable to see him between 2009 and 2014.
She claimed that she went to northern Iraq some time between 2013-2015, during the reconciliation period, to see her "loved one" and that she was not a member of a political party back then. But a witness noted that she also met with him in 2016.
The HDP has been subject to public criticism for transferring taxpayer money and funds to the PKK, an internationally recognized terrorist group. HDP mayors and local officials are known to have misallocated funds in support of the PKK and provided jobs to the group's sympathizers.