TURKEY’S opposition People’s Democratic Party (HDP) has said it will not “submit to persecution,” despite the detention of scores of its elected officials and members over the past week.

Party spokesman Gunay Kubilay warned that the police operations, in which 100 people were taken into custody in just 24 hours, were designed to “break the will of the people.”

Speaking at a press conference in the Turkish capital, Ankara, he explained that state oppression had intensified since November 20, with 150 people detained in raids across the country.

The government has continued attacks on the party without interruption, he said, hauling in MPs and executive members on “fake grounds.”

Mr Kubilay added: “Anti-Kurdish and HDP terrorism charges works like a wheel of a factory, with orders from a single command centre.

“The palace gives the order, the police establish a case, the courts prepare legal cover and the prisons isolate.

“They think that, in the face of these fascist attacks directed against the existence of our party in every field, the HDP will submit and the people will surrender. 

“They’re very, very wrong,” he insisted, stressing that the government has failed to break the HDP and that it would not submit to persecution.