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Left-wing politician Cansu Özdemir at a rally in Hamburg (archive photo)
Photo: Chris Emil Janssen / imago images / Chris Emil Janssen
When a left-wing "peace delegation" visits the northern Iraqi Kurdish regions, there are again massive problems.
As the news agency dpa reports, dozens of members of the group are stuck in a hotel in Erbil.
Security forces from the Kurdish Peshmerga prevented the around 80 members - around half of them from Germany - from leaving the hotel on Monday.
According to dpa Clara Schuhmann from the Cenî association, which calls itself the "Kurdish Women's Office for Peace", announced this.
Several members also posted posts from the hotel on Twitter.
A trip by the delegation to several Kurdish villages planned for Monday has been prohibited.
"The situation is unclear," said Schuhmann accordingly.
According to the Left Party in Northern Iraq, the delegation wants to find out about Turkey's military operations that have been going on for weeks and draw attention to the "attacks that are contrary to international law." It includes politicians, activists and journalists. Dozens traveled from Germany to Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region that borders Turkey. Members also came from other EU countries and Turkey.
On Saturday, 15 members of the group, including the Hamburg left parliamentary group leader Cansu Özdemir, were prevented from leaving for Iraq at Düsseldorf Airport.
Hamburg's parliamentary speaker Carola Veit (SPD) had recently announced that the measures taken by the federal police could have been illegal or unconstitutional.
As a member of the Hamburg Senate, Özdemir should not have been arrested or hindered in any other way in their freedom and in the exercise of their mandate.
Özdemir's party colleague Sabine Boeddinghaus was stunned by the incident.
The left demanded an explanation from the federal government.
The Kurdish regional government apparently sees »stability of Erbil« in danger
According to the dpa, the Kurdish Ministry of the Interior announced: "The security and stability of Erbil is a red line" and no one is allowed to endanger Erbil. The Kurdish Workers' Party PKK "tries through members and supporters to organize events that would destabilize Erbil," it said.
According to activists, around 50 people were prevented from entering Erbil, including the Berlin left-wing MP Hakan Tas. After arriving from Istanbul, he was detained in the airport security area. When trying to contact the responsible embassy, his cell phone was taken from him, Tas told the dpa. He had been "interrogated" twice and was only able to leave the airport after 13 hours in the security area with the help of his contacts and the mayor of Erbil. Some members of the delegation from Erbil were also sent back to Germany.
The Turkish government and the banned Kurdish Workers' Party PKK have been fighting each other for decades.
The PKK is a terrorist organization in Turkey, Europe and the USA.
The conflict, which has persisted since 1984, killed tens of thousands of people.
Since the failure of a ceasefire in the summer of 2015, the Turkish military has been launching regular attacks against the PKK in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey.
The PKK, in turn, carried out attacks.
fek / dpa