HDP’s Pervin Buldan Detained

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On her official Twitter account, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) İstanbul MP and Parliamentary Deputy Chair Pervin Buldan shared the post that “I have been detained”.

The HDP announced that Buldan was taken from her house in İstanbul this morning and detained.

About Pervin Buldan

She was born in Hakkâri Province in 1967, and she grew up and went to school there. She graduated from high school and started work as an official in the local government administration department.

In 2001 she founded Yakay-Der, the Association of Solidarity and Assistance for the Families of Missing Persons, to help the families of missing persons in Turkey, of which she is now president. Before this she worked for Mag-Der, an association with similar objectives which was closed down by the Turkish authorities because of alleged irregularities with respect to the Turkish Law of Associations

Yakay-Der grew out of the experience of the ‘Saturday Mothers’, who used civil disobedience to gain publicity and bring attention to the ‘disappearances in custody’ cases. These cases became known to the public in Turkey as well as to the world at large.

In 2005, she was nominated as a candidate by a Swiss women initiative for Nobel Peace Prize.

In July 2007, Buldan stood as an independent candidate in the Turkish parliamentary elections and entered the Turkish Parliament. She is an MP for Iğdır. She was re-elected for a second term in the 12 June 2011 general election. In 2008 an investigation was opened against her for a speech that she made during the Newroz celebrations in Iğdır. In April 2010 she headed a group of MPs who demanded an investigation into the Armenian nuclear power plant at Metsamor, near the Turkish border. In 2013 she paid several visits to Ocalan on Imrali Island as deputy chair of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).

Buldan is still serving as HDP Group Deputy Chair.

12 of 59 MPs arrested

HDP Co-Chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, Şırnak MPs Ferhat Encü, Leyla Birlik, Hakkari MPs Selma Irmak, Abdullah Zeydan, Diyarbakır MPs İdris Baluken, Nursel Aydoğan, Ziya Pir, İmam Taşçıer, Ankara MP Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Mardin MP Gülser Yıldırım were taken into custody on November 4.

Pir, Taşçıer and Önder were released on probation.

Yüksekdağ, Demirtaş, Baluken, Birlik, Irmak, Aydoğan, Yıldırım, Zeydan and Encü were arrested on the same day.

HDP Hakkari MP Akdoğan was arrested on November 7. 

HDP Group Deputy Chair Çağlar Demirel and HDP Siirt MP Besime Konca were arrested on December 13, which increased the number of arrested HDP MPs to 12.

HDP İstanbul MP Filiz Kerestecioğlu and HDP Muş MP Ahmet Yıldırım were replaced for the arrested group deputy chairs. (EA/TK)