Testimonies by recently surrendered terrorists have revealed the links between the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and the PKK terrorist group, proving that the two work together to recruit young people.

Anadolu Agency (AA) reported Saturday, citing security forces, that PKK terrorists use a variety of methods to get young people to rural areas and within its ranks, while the HDP prepares the necessary ideological environment, according to the testimonies of surrendered terrorists.

A 23-year-old surrendered terrorist, who was only identified by the initials S.C., said that in 2015 he went to the local HDP offices in the metropolis of Istanbul to volunteer as a campaign worker.

"In October 2015 for 45 days I took ideological lessons on PKK ideology and its women's history, and then I was sent to the HDP provincial offices for two weeks to take lessons on the history of the PKK and its women's units," he said.

S.C. said later he crossed the border from Nusaybin in the southeastern Mardin province to Syria and joined the PKK terrorist group.

B.C., a 19-year-old who surrendered this May, said in his testimony that he decided to join the terror group under the influence of his aunt, in 2015, when he was 15 years old.

"I went to the HDP office in Van to register to join the group, then through two of the organization's couriers I went to northern Iraq," he added.

The PKK often uses northern Iraq to plan cross-border attacks in Turkey.

The HDP, long facing public reaction and judicial probes over its ties to the PKK, is under pressure due to this growing civilian protest movement launched by mothers and local families. Another surrendered terrorist, 19-year-old C.K., testified that his brother joined the terrorist group in 2014.

In 2015, when his family was taking part in a public celebration of the spring festival Newroz in Mersin, a woman approached him and said his brother wanted to see him.

The terrorists bought him a plane ticket and the woman took him to the HDP press office in the eastern city of Van.

"At midnight, we crossed the border from the Yüksekova district of Hakkari to Iraq, and this is how I was tricked into joining the PKK at the age of 15," he said.

S.E., who joined the PKK at age 23 in 2014, said that he had told HDP officials in Diyarbakır that he wanted to go to Kobani, a city in northern Syria near Turkey's border where a siege by the terrorist group Daesh began that year.

"I was taken from the HDP provincial building to a house located in the Bağlar district of Diyarbakır," he said, adding that the HDP took his ID card.

S.E. said he joined the terrorist group when he went to the Suruç district of Şanlıurfa, also in Turkey's southeast, and from there was taken to Kobani.