HDP points finger to Interior Minister Soylu after latest attack on party headquarters

In the latest of attacks targeting the HDP, three unidentified assailants have thrown stones at the party's headquarters in the capital Ankara. The HDP said that such attacks are not coincidental when the “politics-mafia relations have been made public,” pointing the finger to Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, who has been accused of being the connection point between the government and the mafia.

Friday May 14 2021 01:52 pm

Duvar English

Three people late on May 13 threw stones at the headquarters of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), in the latest of attacks against the party.

The HDP later released a statement saying that the attack was a result of the party's being constantly targeted by the government and Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu.

“The perpetrator of this attack, which occurred against Turkey's third-biggest party on the first day of the Eid al-Fitr despite the curfew, is the political circles that feed on chaos and disorder and the rulership which shows our party as a target at every opportunity,” the HDP said.

Partimize yapılan saldırının azmettiricilerini tanıyoruz!

Merkez Yürütme Kurulumuzun açıklaması:https://t.co/L85NZ4uHy3 pic.twitter.com/d2tSyDXAKH
— HDP (@HDPgenelmerkezi) May 14, 2021

The party said that Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu was trying to divert the attention from himself and trying to blame the opposition, after “his dirty relations have been released by the mafia and its dark partners.”

“In a period when the politics-mafia relations have been made public in an explicit way, such attacks that occur against our party with cowardly, gangster-like and mafia-like methods are not coincidental,” the HDP further said.

The party's comments came after mafia leader Sedat Peker accused Soylu of helping him avoid prosecution in Turkey.

In the fourth installment of his video series, Peker said on May 13 Soylu had notified him that an investigation file was being prepared on him which eventually led him to flee Turkey in 2019.

“Did you not say that they are filing an investigation file on Sedat Peker? Did you not say that I will let him know when there is a dangerous situation?” the 49-year-old convicted mafia leader said on his YouTube channel.

Experts say that the government's and Soylu's relentless verbal attacks on the HDP should be seen as reciprocal political rivalry, at a time when the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is losing support among voters.

Recent polls have found the public support for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling AKP at an all-time low, a decrease that is said to be mainly attributable to the country's economic crisis.

On March 17, a new lawsuit to close the HDP was launched, on the same day that HDP MP Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu was stripped of his parliamentary status.

Experts believe that the AKP will continue to criminalize and target opposition voices, while presenting fictitious “reform” and “rights-based proposals” to the West.