KJA denounces attack on HDP driver
DİYARBAKIR (DİHA) - The women's group Congress of Free Women (KJA) has made a statement declaring that in the wake of the brutal killing of a man driving a HDP elections vehicle just three days before Turkey's elections, women are more determined than ever to defeat the AKP at the polls.
Hamdullah Öğe was a driver of an elections vehicle for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which is hoping to enter Turkey's Parliament for the first time in Turkey's June election. Öğe was returning to his home in the village of Serpmekaya in Bingöl province last night when he was assassinated. Investigations indicate that attackers shot at the vehicle, then removed Öğe from the vehicle and killed him by firing squad. HDP officials and soldiers flooded to the scene when villagers reported the gunshots. Investigations are ongoing.
90% of the attacks and harassment of political party members and volunteers in the lead-up to Turkey's June 7 election have targeted the HDP. If the HDP manages to overcome Turkey's extremely high 10% elections threshold and enter Parliament, it will disrupt the AKP's plans to implement a new, more centralized political system. Attacks on the HDP have included a simultaneous bombing of two HDP offices; attacks on HDP offices with stones and Molotov cocktails; and now, a firing squad assassination.
The Kurdish women's organization KJA immediately denounced the attack on the party. The statement compared the attacks on the HDP to the brutal attempts to suppress the Kurdish political movement in the 1990s and 2000s, when countless civilians were assassinated in the Turkish state's dirty war in the Kurdish region.
"The greatest response we can give to these attacks is to escalate our organized struggle and destroy the elections threshold," said the KJA.
(cm/nt)
