Turkey bans former HDP co-chair’s poetry book, orders to destroy confiscated copies

Turkey banned pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party’s (HDP) imprisoned former co-chair Figen Yuksekdag’s poetry book “Walls to demolish.”

A Turkish court on Thursday decided to impose a prohibition on printing, distribution and sale of the book throughout Turkey and to destroy the confiscated copies, on charges of "making propaganda for a terrorist organization,” Mezopotamya news agency reported.

Yuksekdag has been jailed since 2016 on several terrorism related charges, including, leading a terrorist organization.  

She was arrested in November 2016, along with her then fellow co-chair Selahattin Demirtas. 

Ankara government blames HDP, Turkey’s second-largest opposition party of having links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a claim that the party denies. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched a crackdown on HDP after the peace talks with the PKK broke down in 2015. Last November, Erdogan called HDP the "puppet’’ of the PKK and vowed to “save” the country from it. 

Yuksekdag’s book became the target of accusations over her “My cloudy head” titled poem. 

The lines in the poem saying "Humanity is writhing on the edge of poverty, while the babies in the deserted houses were being set on fire by darkness, and being shot in the head," were seen as a reason for the charges, Mezopotamya said.

PKK is an armed group fighting an insurgency on Turkish soil for four decades and designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.