Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP [6]) on Jan. 16 asked the Turkish Constitutional Court to postpone its decision on a government request to ban the party until after the upcoming general elections, planned for June. Co-leader of the HDP, Mithat Sancar, told reporters: "The Constitutional Court should stop all proceedings on this case. The authorities want to use this case against the HDP as a tool to threaten us." President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government accuses the HDP of having ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is banned in Turkey. The HDP won 12% of the vote in the 2018 general election and holds 56 of parliament's 579 seats. (Kurdistan24 [8])
On Jan. 5, upon a request from the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, the Constitutional Court temporarily blocked the payment of treasury funds to the HDP on the basis of supposed ties to the PKK. (HDP [9])
HDP leaders have been criminally prosecuted [10] on charges of spreading PKK [11] "terror propaganda."
