ISTANBUL: Turkish police on Sunday detained a prominent pro-Kurdish party politician who was staging a days-long protest in parliament. He was released after questioning several hours later.

Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, from the Peoples Democratic Party, or HDP, refused to leave parliament after he was stripped of his status and immunity as lawmaker on Wednesday. The party said around 100 police officers entered parliament to detain him. Video of his detention showed police officers dragging him away.

His detention came during a tumultuous weekend in which the Turkish president fired the central bank governor and annulled an international agreement on protecting women from violence. It also follows a heightened crackdown on the HDP.

The party said Gergerlioglu was detained as he was performing his ablutions for morning prayers.

The police insisted on detaining him, and took him away in his pajamas and slippers, the HDP said in a statement.

A statement by the prosecutors office, quoted by official Anadolu news agency, said Gergerlioglu was detained for not leaving parliament despite losing his status as lawmaker and for slogans chanted by some people during a protest in parliament on Wednesday praising the jailed leader of a Kurdish militant group.

Gergerlioglu, speaking on Periscope after his release, described being forced out of parliament by police detaining him and irregularities during his police statement.

They fabricated a crime to get me out of parliament, he said.

Gergerlioglu, the former head of an Islamist human rights association, has exposed several human rights violations in Turkey, including alleged illegal strip-searches of detainees by police. He trained and worked as a pulmonologist but was fired through an emergency decree. He advocated for the tens of thousands of other civil servants who were purged in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt.

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2021