BRITAIN’S Kurdish rights campaigners sent their solidarity to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) yesterday as activists in Turkey began marching for democracy.

Party members and supporters set off from the north-west city of Edirne and south-east city of Hakkari to the capital Ankara.

The march took place amid rumours of a possible snap election and talk of a move to shut the HDP down.

Members of the Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign (KSC) said that while they were unable to be with activists in Turkey, they were with them “every step towards the end of tyrannical, authoritarian rule.” 

KSC spokeswoman Rosa Gilbert said: “While attention is focused on other international and domestic issues, President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan of Turkey is undertaking yet another authoritarian clampdown coupled with aggressive military attacks on Kurdish refugee camps. 

“The political clampdowns are timed to strangle one of the few progressive democratic vessels still fighting for peace and democracy, the HDP. 

“Turkey’s military attacks on survivors of Isis genocide in Shengal and Makhmour are an attempt to finish off Isis’s attempted genocide of Kurds, Yazidis and other minorities in northern Syria and Iraq, and must be condemned.”

Ms Gilbert warned that Turkey “is only able to act with impunity” because of the silence of international bodies such as Nato and countries like Britain which “don’t want to risk” diplomatic and trade relationships. 

She said: “Let’s be clear: the UK, through its weapons sales to Turkey, is complicit, and we all have a duty to speak out against our government’s complicity in political repression and imperialist aggression in the Middle East.”

Campaigners are urging people in Britain to raise the issue in constituency Labour parties and trade union and to consider affiliating to the KSC to help strengthen the movement.