Turkey is on the point of banning the main Kurdish opposition party

Turkey’s biggestHDPHDP Kurdish party is banned from spending its own money. Its mayors, despite the fact that they have been directly elected, have been removed from city halls and replaced with caretakers appointed by the government in Ankara, the capital. The party’s former leader, Selahattin Demirtas (pictured), has been imprisoned since 2016. And now it looks as though its elected members of parliament could be expelled and the party banned, ahead of national elections that are due to be held in June. Welcome to democracy under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.The decision is “99% made”, says Ertugrul Kurkcu, one of the members of parliament in question for the People’s Democratic Party (). “We can say the has already been closed.”