1 Early in the morning of 18 February the Turkish police rounded up 52 Kurdish and leftist activists as part of a wave of mass arrests. In a series of coordinated operations across ten provinces, numerous journalists, artists, and politicians were detained, and their access to legal representation was blocked. Over 300 people have been arrested since 14 February, and fears have been expressed that thousands more will fall victim to this clampdown.

2 The arrests on 18 February resulted from an investigation into the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (PDC). This was founded in 2011 when there were peace talks between the Kurdish freedom movement and the Turkish state headed by the AKP government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It is a coalition of leftist and democratic parties, including the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), Its founders included many leftists ...