Esquerra sides with the chief Kurdish party in a trial seeking to outlaw it just months before Turkish general election

Esquerra Republicana has carried out a series of actions and public statements in solidarity with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) prior to the trial it was to face last week and which the court has delayed until next month. With the general elections in Turkey just months away, the HDP is facing the prospect of proscription by the Turkish judiciary, while it has received a multiplicity of displays of support everywhere.

Senator Laura Castel, the only pro-independence member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, is in Turkey representing Esquerra Republicana to show support for the HDP and to attend the trial as an international observer. She will also meet with representatives of the HDP and Turkish human rights defence associations. “We are in Ankara to denounce the repression of the Erdoğan regime and to show our solidarity with the People’s Democratic Party at a crucial time,” Ms Castel said. She also wished to emphasize the links between Esquerra Republicana and the HDP: “We also know the price to pay with political repression, and that’s why we can only be at their side today. We must call for democracy and human rights everywhere.”

Furthermore, Esquerra held a joint press conference in the Parliament of Catalonia on Monday together with Junts per Catalunya, En Comú Podem and CUP, in which a manifesto was read in support of the HDP. Esquerra was represented by Member of Parliament and of the Bureau Ruben Wagensberg.

In addition, the party has been carrying out smaller actions since April 2021 when the trial began, including letters from Esquerra leaders to HDP political prisoners in January 2022, or the statement against the Turkish attacks in southern Kurdistan in April of that year. In fact, Esquerra’s Republican group in the Spanish Congress has also collected signatures in support of the Kurdish party. Meanwhile, Meritxell Serret—now the Catalan government’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and EU—and Senator Laura Castel attended the fifth Congress of the HDP in July 2020.