HDP calls for calm in face of recent racist provocations
NEWS DESK (DİHA) - With Turkey's elections approaching this Sunday, Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) candidates and leaders across the country have implored HDP voters not to respond in anger to the racist attacks on the HDP.
On Wednesday night, unknown attackers shot at a HDP vehicle in a rural area of Bingöl province. They stopped the car and assassinated the driver, Hamdullah Öge, firing squad style. Yesterday, a racist mob in the city of Erzurum attempted to burn to death Aydın Taşkesen, a man driving a car decorated with HDP flags.
A local women's assembly of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Istanbul's Şirinevler neighborhood denounced the Hamdullah Öge assassination yesterday at a protest.
' AKP is trying to provoke HDP voters'
"The AKP is trying to provoke HDP voters and get them to take to the streets," said Beyza Üstün, a professor of environmental engineering at Yıldız Technical University and a HDP candidate for Istanbul. She called on voters not to respond to the provocation and to continue their elections organizing as normal.
HDP Istanbul candidate Hüda Kaya, speaking at a meeting with women candidates in the province of Antep, said that the attacks were "a clear provocation" and an attempt to sabotage the HDP's success at the polls. "This massacre was a direct result of the angry language used by President Tayyip Erdoğan," she said. She noted that Erdoğan's sexist hate speech used against HDP women peacefully protesting him in Iğdır was an example of virulent speech designed to provoke attacks.
(cm/nt)
