Smoke rising over southern Turkish province of Diyarbakir's Sur district, as the curfew entered its fourth month on January 24, 2016. Depo Photos/Press Association. All rights reserved.
In July the Turkish state opened criminal investigations against four HDP lawmakers for attending the funerals of Kurdish guerillas, as well as against an HDP Co-Chair, Pervin Buldan, who publicly encouraged HDP members to do this. Musa Farisoğulları, HDP MP for Diyarbakir is one of the parliamentarians under investigation by the Turkish government. In this interview, he talks about the political atmosphere in North Kurdistan (southeast Turkey) and the relationship between different actors in the Kurdish movement.
Diyarbakır (Amed in Kurdish) was one of the cities in North Kurdistan that became the target of military attack by the Turkish government in 2015-2016. Following the HDP surpassing the 10% electoral threshold in the June 2015 elections, thereby disrupting the AKP’s plan to win a parliamentary majority, the Turkish state started detaining HDP activists and members en masse – in particular, in the southeast of the country – and announced curfews in the Kurdish cities.
