Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party spokesman detained

Ankara: Turkish authorities detained the spokesman of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) for insulting police, CNN Turk said on Friday, the latest detention of a high-profile politician from the Kurdish-rooted opposition.

Osman Baydemir, 46, served as mayor of Diyarbakir, Turkey’s largest mainly Kurdish city, for ten years before he joined the Turkish parliament in 2014.

More than a dozen HDP lawmakers have been jailed, mostly due to alleged links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against Turkey for more than three decades. The HDP denies direct ties to the PKK.