MANİSA - HDP member Sabır Söyü was attacked by racist Turks for speaking Kurdish in the western province of Manisa.

 

Sabır Söyü, a member of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) living in Şehzadeler district of Manisa, in western Turkey, was attacked by two unidentified persons while on his way from work at factory back to home.

 

Speaking to Mesopotamia Agency, Söyü told the following as to how the attack happed; “I work at a factory. I got off the bus at around 5 p.m. I was talking to a friend on the phone as I was walking on the way back home. Walking on a desolate street, two people approached me and shouted ‘What are you talking about?’ They did it because I was speaking in Kurdish on the phone. I asked them what was happening, saying that I didn’t understand what the problem was. They told me ‘Speak Turkish, we don’t understand you’. They swore at me and said ‘You will either say ‘how happy is the one who says i'm Turkish’, or leave this country’. Then they battered me. I have marks of battery on my body. I went to hospital and got an assault report. Tomorrow I will go to the police station and file a complaint.”