Turkish police on Sunday detained at least 75 people for spreading terrorist propaganda at a Nevruz celebration in Istanbul, the city governorate said.
Suspects M.A., Ş.A. and Y.Ö. were detained for rolling out posters of the PKK terrorist group’s jailed ringleader Abdullah Öcalan at the event organized by the PKK-affiliated Green Left Party (YSP), the governorate said.
Police detained M.K. and M.B., who were already wanted on charges of "spreading terrorist propaganda," during security controls at the event, which is an ancient festival celebrating the arrival of spring with traditional dances and a large bonfire.
Some other 70 suspects, 15 of whom were women, were detained for resisting the police, causing chaos and shouting illegal slogans in service of terrorist propaganda in and around the event area, according to the governorate.
The YSP is informally known as the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) and is a successor of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). The party rebranded as the YSP after last year’s May elections to skirt a Constitutional Court lawsuit seeking its permanent closure over alleged links to the PKK. It later tried to change its name to DEM Party, but the courts rejected the request.
The PKK is recognized as a terrorist group in Türkiye, as well as in the European Union and the United States. Its bloody insurgency starting in the 1980s has left over 40,000 people dead in the country.
Public displays of its symbols or images of Öcalan are banned in Türkiye and several EU countries.
Dozens of HDP members, including branch chairs, have been previously arrested over their ties to the terrorist group in recent years. The now-obsolete HDP’s former chair, Selahattin Demirtaş, has been in prison since 2016 for spreading terrorist propaganda and having ties to the PKK and retired from active politics last June.
The 74-year-old Öcalan has been held in an island prison near Istanbul ever since Turkish security agents seized him in Kenya in 1999 and has spent much of that time in isolation.
Addressing the crowd, the YSP’s mayoral candidate for Istanbul in the upcoming local elections, Meral Danış Beştaş, repeated the party’s call for Öcalan’s release.
"Öcalan must be free. Nevruz is freedom," Beştaş said as the crowd chanted the names of Öcalan and Demirtaş.
PKK sympathizers often march in Türkiye and EU countries like Germany, Sweden and Italy, calling for Öcalan’s freedom with the toleration of local law enforcement, an issue that draws Ankara’s ire.
Turkish officials also say less than 200 PKK terrorists remain in Turkish territories, while others are confined to Iraq and Syria. The group, battered and demoralized by Turkish security forces’ successful operations, has been, in recent years, also losing members and failing to attract recruits, according to Turkish officials.