The motion before Turkey's Constitutional Court to ban the pro-Kurdish HDP: An example of the entanglement of politics and the judiciary, and a bad omen for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict

Osman Can

No 38/2021, SWP Comments from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Abstract: On 2 March 2021, the Turkish Prosecutor General's office opened investigations into the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). On 17 March it filed its application with the Constitutional Court to have the party banned. The Prosecutor General further sought to prohibit 687 HDP officials from engaging in political activities for five years. This would have amounted to excluding almost all HDP politicians from politics, and thus closing political channels for discussing and solving the Kurdish question for years. On 31 March the Constitutional Court rejected the application due to procedural flaws. However, on 6 June, the Prosecutor General's office announced that it had filed a further motion to ban the party. This move to prohibit civilian and non-violent Kurdish politics risks augmenting the illegal Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and perpetuating the Kurdish conflict. It reveals the entanglement of politics and the judi­ciary in Turkey, and highlights structural deficits in the Turkish Constitution.

Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:swpcom:382021

DOI: 10.18449/2021C38

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