The Spanish observers included members of the left-leaning Podemos party; EH Bildu, a Basque nationalist coalition; and a senator from Esquerra Republicana, a Catalonian leftist party. The observers were in the Kurdish-majority city of Siirt when they were arrested and taken to a police station on Sunday, the day of the election. Officers then went to the hotel where the observers were staying and arrested the remaining members of the delegation, who joined their comrades in detention at the police station. They were held until Monday morning and released on the condition they leave the country, escorted to the airport and flown back to Spain on Monday and Tuesday.
Ismael Cortés, a national congressional deputy with Podemos, and Miriam Ojeda, a representative of the International Secretariat of Podemos, were among those detained. Spain and Turkey are both members of NATO.
“The situation of the retention and expulsion as a delegation that we have experienced is just one example of the greater context of repression and persecution of the opposition that has been experienced for years in Turkey and that has the Kurdish people as a special objective,” said Cortés. “We are concerned about the situation of the members and supporters of the YSP and HDP party and the respect for their fundamental, civil, and political rights.”
The observers also said in a statement to The Intercept that several members of the Kurdish YSP party were also arrested. Their fate is not known, and the Erdogan government did not respond to requests for comment. “This new and intolerable example of repression demonstrates the authoritarian drift of the regime of Erdogan, which undermines the democratic principles and fundamental rights of the Turkish citizenry and, especially, of the peoples present in this territory, such as the Kurdish,” the observers said in the statement.
Comments