Detention of HDP lawmakers is part of legal process: PM Yıldırım

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said that the detention of 11 lawmakers from the opposition People's Democratic Party (HDP) was a part of the legal process.

HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ and nine other top party members were detained early Friday as part of a counter-terrorism investigation.

“They [HDP MPs] were detained because they refused to give testimony,” Yıldırım told reporters in Ankara, adding the process was a legal requirement.

The police operation against the MPs comes after prosecutors in Diyarbakır, Hakkari, Van, Şırnak and Bingöl provinces gave the go-ahead following the parliamentarians' refusal to cooperate with the investigation.

While answering his thought about the main opposition party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's statement regarding the detention that elected people should go with election, Yıldırım said, "We don't have any objection to this."

“But the popular vote doesn't give them a mandate to support terrorism,” PM added.

He said: “If someone does wrong or something with terrorism, he / she should give an account for this.”

Despite being a parliamentary group, HDP has longstanding ties with the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) terrorist group, which is responsible for numerous terror attacks in the southeast.

The Turkish Prime Minister strongly condemned a malicious terror attack in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir early Friday.

He confirmed that the death toll of the car bomb attack by the PKK terrorists increased to eight, including two police.

“The car bomb attack near Diyarbakır police station also wounded more than 100 people, 93 of whom were released by hospital authorities,” he said.

One PKK terrorist was also killed on the scene, PM Yıldırım added.

Yıldırım vowed to continue Turkey's fight against terrorism.

The PKK, which is listed as a terror organization to Turkey, EU and the US, has been conducting armed conflicts since 1984 and is responsible for killing over 40,000 people.