Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) on Thursday launched a fundraising campaign for its electoral campaign as the Constitutional Court (AYM) ruled to block its Treasury accounts.
HDP Spokeswoman Ebru Günay announced the donation campaign entitled “Our Treasure is Our People”, saying that the AYM’s decision to prevent the party from accessing its allocated Treasury funds for 2023 as part of the closure case against the HDP, was politically motivated and aimed to prolong the life of the current government.
Günay mentioned numerous messages of solidarity and donation requests they received from the public after the AYM ruling, and said, “We have proven time and time again that no force can defeat an organised people, and we will prove it once more.”
Court of Cassation Chief Prosecutor Bekir Şahin violated the law and committed a crime in the closure case against the party, Günay added.
The AYM had initially turned down a similar request to block the party’s Treasury accounts on 21 June 2021. However, when Şahin presented his case again on 13 December 2022, without any justification or concrete evidence, he was granted time to collect evidence he needed.
The top prosecutor then put forth anonymous witness testimony from an unrelated investigation in the southeastern Diyarbakır (Amed). The testimony was added to the investigation case files one day after Şahin’s request, Günay said, arguing that Şahin’s office had mobilised other state institutions to produce false evidence against the HDP.
“The prosecutor presented evidence that he had not presented while filing the closure case against our party,” Günay said, accusing Şahin of “producing evidence to influence and mislead the court”. The newly presented evidence could be subject to a new indictment, but should not have had any bearing on the current case, she said.
The current case is based on an indictment prepared by the Court of Cassation in June 2021. If the AYM rules that the HDP is a ‘focal point for terrorist activity’, the party with the third largest vote in the country will be shut down and more than 450 of its top members, executives, mayors and MPs will be banned from holding public office or joining political parties.
HDP lodged an application on 16 January to AYM for adjournment of the closure case. However, on 26 January, AYM unanimously rejected the application.
