Green Left Party is founded upon instructions from PKK: Turkish interior minister

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - In a televised interview on Tuesday, the Turkish interior minister slammed the Green Left Party (Yesil Sol) for having ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK),  hours after Turkish police arrested over 100 pro-Kurdish journalists, politicians and activists for alleged ties to the group. 

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, appeared as a guest on a program of the pro-government 24 TV, where he talked about the Green Left Party’s ties to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). 

“The Green Left Party is founded after instructions from Qandil itself, in order to be an alternative party to HDP,” he said. He referred to the Qandil mountains in the neighboring Kurdistan Region where PKK bases are located. The area has also been subjected to sporadic bombing by Turkish forces. 

The comments from the Turkish minister came hours after Turkish police arrested at least 128 people for alleged ties with the PKK, which Ankara considers a terrorist group. 

“If we look at the candidate lists of the said party, includes terrorists from the mountain [Qandil],” said Soylu, implying that the candidates of the Green Left were former PKK militants who want to become members of the parliament.

However, in order for a party to be established in Turkey, it requires approval from the ministry of interior, as well as a signature from the minister himself. 

HDP is a pro-Kurdish leftist party that includes members of different backgrounds in Turkey. They mainly advocate for Kurdish rights, and the rights of the ethnic, religious and other minorities in the country.

HDP’s stance as opposition has attracted the ire of the Justice and Development Party (AKP)-led government, being subjected to several raids and arrests in the past few days. HDP’s former co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag have been jailed since 2016 for alleged terror crimes.

However, HDP itself is facing the threat of being closed down as the Turkish prosecutor’s office filed a case against the party at the Turkish constitutional court for its alleged ties to the PKK. HDP refused to have a defense in the hearing of the case on April 11.

HDP will contest the elections as the Green Left Party, and they are viewed as the decisive factor in the elections. The party also expressed implicit support for the opposition presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu to unseat current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.