TURKEY’S Supreme Court of Appeals filed a lawsuit with the Constitutional Court today demanding the closure of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), as demanded by the neofascist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

Chief Public Prosecutor Bekir Sahin filed the case, which claims that the HDP aimed “to destroy and eliminate the indivisible unity of the state with its nation through their statements and actions.”

In a written statement, Mr Sahin claimed that the HDP acted “together with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] terrorist organisaton and … is an extension of the organisaton.”

MHP leader Devlet Bahceli has been agitating for some time for the HDP to be shut down. He has cited the so-called Kobane case, which has seen charges brought against 108 senior party figures, including former co-leaders Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas. 

That indictment calls for 38 life sentences without parole for all defendants in the case. They are charged with a range of offences, including 37 cases of homicide and “disrupting the unity and territorial integrity of the state.”

The case was brought by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who accused the HDP of being responsible for the deaths through its call for indefinite protests against the government during the Isis siege of Kobane in northern Syria in October 2014. 

Mr Bahceli, whose party is a junior partner in the government, has previously threatened to “do what is necessary” if the closure order is not granted.

The HDP has faced intense pressure. Some 20,000 of its members have been detained, with 10,000 receiving jail sentences since 2016 in the biggest assault on a legal political party since World War II.

More than 50 municipalities won by the party in the 2019 local elections have been taken over by government-appointed trustees, while MP Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu had has parliamentary status removed today.

HDP co-chair Mithat Sancar has vowed that attempts to close the party “make us stronger” and that it would emerge from the “darkness of oppression.” 

The HDP central executive board was discussing its response as the Morning Star went to press.