VIDEO: Top Kurdish lawyer speaks to MEE hours before his arrest in Turkey
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - Turkish police on Tuesday arrested a top lawyer in the majority Kurdish city of Diyarbakir for alleged "terrorist propaganda", taking him to Istanbul for questioning, a legal source said.
The source said Tahir Elci, head of the bar in the southeastern city and campaigner for Kurdish rights, was arrested after an interview he gave to CNN Turk last week in which he said the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) "is not a terrorist organisation".
Elci spoke with MEE contributor Murat Bayram hours before he was arrested. In the short video Elci tells MEE that he has been tipped off about his pending arrest which he said was happening in the "next" few hours.
According to Elci, authorities have ordered his arrest due to comments he made on CNN Turk over the weekend in which he did not call the outlawed PKK a terrorist organisation.
"After my words a lynch campaign was started against me," Elci said while blaming the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party MHP for the ensuing public backlash over his comments.
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