TURKEY’S opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) democracy march arrived in Diyarbakir today evening despite attempts by the Turkish state to stop its progress.

The authorities blocked citizens from lining the streets to welcome the delegation, which set off from HDP MP Leyla Guven’s Hakkari constituency on Monday morning as part of a week-long march to Ankara.

Ms Guven, who was released from jail last week after five days behind bars, was there today to welcome the marchers in the largely Kurdish city in Turkey’s south-east.

Earlier the HDP marchers had set off from Van, unfurling a banner with the slogan “em bi hev re” (“we are together” in Kurdish) highlighting the march’s call for democratic unity in the face of an  increasingly authoritarian Turkish state.

Saliha Aydeniz, co-chair of the Peace & Democracy Party (BDP), said the march would bring “democracy to Turkey and freedom to Kurdistan” but criticised a ban by the authorities on the march entering 16 municipalities.

She also condemned the recent Turkish air strikes against the Maxmur and Sengal refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan and said the march would bring an end to war, “let Turkey breathe and end fascism.”

Speaking at the Grand Assembly in Ankara, where the march will arrive on Friday, HDP parliamentary vice-president Meral Danis Bestas took aim at the media, which had been discussing the party while effectively banning it from the airwaves and newspapers.

“We know very well the relations of media bosses and the government. There is an agreement,” she said, accusing them of purveying propaganda for the ruling Justice & Development Party (AKP). “But this agreement will be recorded on the dark pages of history, and they will pay for it,” Ms Bestas said.

Participants on a second march, which set off from Edirne, on the border with Bulgaria in Turkey’s north-west, met trade unions and rights organisations in the country’s largest city Istanbul today, where police had imposed a ban on gatherings.

On Tuesday evening HDP MP for Istanbul Saruhan Oluc spoke to the press in the city’s Esenyurt district despite the ban.

He insisted that “six million voters … will never bow down to this oppression” and highlighted the serious economic difficulties facing the country because of authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

“Two out of every three people are worried about jobs and daily bread; unemployment, high costs of living and inflation are on the rise. No matter how much they tamper with the numbers, people know what kind of a crisis they are faced with,” he said.

The twin marches will set off again tomorrow, arriving in the capital Ankara on Friday.