TURKISH police seized Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MP Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu from his parliamentary sit-in today, four days after he was stripped of his status and immunity.

Mr Gergerlioglu began an occupation protest after his MP status was revoked, a decision linked to his 2018 conviction for “spreading terrorist propaganda” by retweeting an article about a call for peace talks issued by the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail at the time, though he was released after questioning today.

Police acted following calls from Devlet Bahceli of the fascist National Movement Party to remove him, describing him as a “separatist” and a “dagger in the great Turkish nation’s heart.”

Mr Gergerlioglu is a human-rights activist who exposed strip searches of women in police custody. His arrest came on the weekend that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan withdrew from the Istanbul Convention on combating violence against women.

Mr Erdogan signed a decree annulling Turkey’s ratification of the landmark 2011 convention on Saturday, prompting women’s protests across the country.

His ruling Justice & Development Party has attacked the convention for some time, saying it undermines “traditional values” by encouraging divorce and that its use of categories such as sexual orientation promote homosexuality.

Council of Europe secretary-general Marija Pejcinovic Buric said the decision was “all the more deplorable because it compromises the protection of women.”

Demonstrations were called in several Turkish cities under the slogan “withdraw the decision, implement the treaty.” 

“We were struggling every day so that the Istanbul Convention would be implemented and women would live. We are very angry today. We can no longer bear even one women’s death. We do not have any tolerance for this,” protester Dilan Akyuz said in Istanbul.

The Women’s Coalition Turkey said the move would “encourage the murderers of women, harassers, rapists,” and the Turkish Communist Party accused the government of misogyny.

Its communist women wing said the convention had never been implemented, with “law-enforcement officers sending women subjected to violence back home and courts applying ‘good behaviour’ discounts to perpetrators of violence against women,” but the decision to annul it entirely showed that “the government has no intention of stopping violence against women — even for show.”