ISTANBUL: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan signed a bill on Tuesday to lift lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution, his office said, a constitutional change likely to end with the removal of some pro-Kurdish opposition deputies from parliament.
Erdogan has accused the pro-Kurdish HDP, parliament’s third-biggest party, of being the political wing of militants who have waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast, and wants to see them prosecuted.
The constitutional change could also ease Erdogan’s push for greater presidential powers.
(Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz, Writing by Seda Sezer; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Reuters
