Kurdish women and children visit the grave site of a loved one in a cemetery where approximately 500 Kurdish men and boys who were killed during the early years of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The remains were brought from the mass burial site near Bussia, Iraq, and given a proper burial where they are now in Barzan, Iraq. DVIDSHUB/Wikimedia Commons.Public domain.On September 13, Aysel Tugluk, the deputy chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), tried to bury her mother, Hatun Tugluk, in a cemetery in Ankara, Turkey, by her mother’s will. Unfortunately, she could not.
Tugluk had to receive special permission to attend the funeral since she was among the thirteen members of the pro-Kurdish party, HDP, who have been have been detained on terrorism-related charges in Turkey. This trend of an authoritarian crackdown on democratically elected officials has exacerbated since the declaration of a state of emergency in 2016.
During the funeral, a mob approached the cemetery while chanting slogans that they would not allow "terrorists" to be buried there. Tugluk decided to take the deceased to Tunceli, her home city, for protection since the mob had even brought a tractor to remove the body after burial.
