Turkish police detained several co-chairs of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in southeastern Diyarbakır province and Yenişehir district and confiscated PKK-related materials from the party's headquarters and Yenişehir offices.
Counterterrorism squads also confiscated the mobile phones of the co-chairs, Demirören News Agency (DHA) reported Thursday, while confiscated material from the offices included documents and propaganda of the PKK terrorist group, as well as posters of PKK ringleader Abdullah Öcalan.
The raids follow a series of detentions and raids on the party and its officials, who are accused of having links to the PKK.
On Wednesday, an investigation revealed that HDP officials secretly transferred aid money to the terrorists and provided assistance in handling the funerals of the killed PKK terrorists.
The party's headquarters in Diyarbakır, which was raided by police Thursday, has been the main spot for a group of Kurdish families who have been protesting their children's recruitment by the PKK. The families accuse the party of facilitating recruitment and kidnapping youth for the terrorist group.
The HDP has many times drawn ire for transferring taxpayer money and funds to the PKK, a globally recognized terrorist group. HDP mayors and local officials have been found to misuse funds in support of the PKK terrorist group and provide jobs to PKK sympathizers.
Its mayors have also been accused of undermining municipal services, allowing the PKK to dig ditches in the streets and launch attacks on police and soldiers when the terrorist group adopted an urban warfare strategy in July 2015 and ended a two-year reconciliation period. HDP municipalities and their staff were also found to be actively participating in terrorist attacks launched after July 2015.
As a result, Turkey removed the elected administrations of 93 municipalities in the region for their links to the PKK terrorist group and appointed trustees to these municipalities in 2016 in the aftermath of the coup attempt launched by the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ).
