Turkey’s Kurdish party leads cross-country protest march

Under a hail of rubber bullets and mass detentions, Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) began a two-track march from two ends of the country: Edirne in the northwest and Hakkari in the south east, planning to converge in Ankara on June 20. Earlier this month, President Recep Erdogan had two HDP deputies and a main opposition lawmaker stripped of their status and jailed 23 HDP mayors. “We can’t breathe anymore, as George Floyd said,” one marcher said. The night before the march began, the Turkish air force resumed strikes against Kurdish PKK strongholds in northern Iraq.