Hauled before courts of injustice Against the background of continuing tensions in Syria and Iraq, Esen Uslu reports on the legal assault on the internal Kurdish opposition A new and all-encompassing legal challenge against the soft-left, pro-Kurdish HDP (People’s Democratic Party) has started in Ankara’s criminal courts. The trumped-up charges against over 100 leading figures in the party are mostly related to speeches made by HDP members in parliament during the defence of the town of Kobane. This was the fight put up by Kurdish freedom fighters against the Islamic State onslaught in Syria in 2014. The indictments are for murder! Then there are allegations based on statements made by secret witnesses, along with a lot of conjecture. All this was deemed a proper basis of indictment by the court, which means that trials are to go ahead.