A gendarmerie commander in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeastern Şırnak (Şirnex) province confiscated weapons from five village guards after they liked social media posts by jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş.
İlhan E., Sinan E., Hacı Y., Barış Ö. and Hacı A. were called in to the local gendarmerie headquarters and questioned, Mezopotamya Agency reported. The guards, who are civilians selected by security forces to aid in local operations and provided with arms, told reporters they had been threatened and told not to “engage in politics over social media”.
Witnesses report that the local commander had threatened villagers who support the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), or the Green Left Party (YSP), whose candidates come from the Labour and Democracy Alliance of pro-Kurdish and left-wing groups in Turkey.
Selahattin Demirtaş has been behind bars since 2016 over terrorism charges without a finalised conviction, based on accusations of affiliation with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) during his time as co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is part of the same alliance. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled for his immediate release, saying his arrest was politically motivated and not based on proof of criminal activity.