West condemns Turkey over arrest of Kurdish lawmakers
Following the arrests of elected members of the Turkish parliament's third largest party, US, EU, UN, German and Danish officials express 'grave concern' over the political crackdown.
Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, co-leaders of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), were jailed pending trial after being detained in overnight raids, officials said. Ten other HDP lawmakers were also detained, although some were later released.
The arrest of elected members of the Turkish parliament's third largest party, and the detention or suspension of more than 110,000 officials since a failed coup in July, may "go beyond what is permissible", the UN human rights office said.
The United States expressed deep concern, while Germany and Denmark summoned Turkish diplomats over the Kurdish detentions, and European Parliament President Martin Schulz said the actions "call into question the basis for the sustainable relationship between the EU and Turkey".
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters: "Turkey is a nation of laws, nobody has preferential treatment before the law ... What has been done is within the rule of law."
The HDP lawmakers were arrested after they refused to give testimony in a probe linked to "terrorist propaganda", Yildirim said, adding that "Politics can't be a shield for committing crimes".
Hours after the detentions, a car bomb killed nine people and wounded more than 100 near a police station in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir where some of the lawmakers were being held.
The HDP, which made history last year by becoming the first Kurdish party to win 10 percent of the vote and enter parliament, said the detentions risked triggering civil war.
In a video message on a website close to the Kurdish PKK militants, one of the group's top commanders, Murat Karayilan, said the group would intensify its three-decade-old armed struggle against Turkey and called on Kurds—the country's largest minority—to react.
The arrests of elected lawmakers from the HDP, which won more than five million votes at the last general election, heightened concern among Western allies about the political direction of Turkey, a NATO member and a buffer between Europe and the conflicts raging in Syria and Iraq.
European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she was "extremely worried" by the arrests, and raised her concerns in a telephone call with Turkey's foreign and EU affairs ministers late on Friday.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Ankara had a right to fight terrorism, but could not use it to justify gagging opponents.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused EU member states of supporting the PKK and dismissed the bloc's criticism as "unacceptable". Turkey began negotiations to join the EU in 2005, but has made glacial progress, and there is no prospect of it joining anytime soon.
