Turkey’s parliament stripped three opposition lawmakers of their parliamentary status in a stormy session today after their convictions on assorted terror charges were upheld by an appeals court. Leyla Guven and Musa Farisogllulari of the Kurdish-friendly People's Democratic Party (HDP) and Enis Berberoglu of the main secular opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) lost their seats in the 600-seat legislature. Hours later Farisogllulari was detained as he set out for Ankara from the mainly Kurdish southeast province of Diyarbakir. There followed news that Guven was detained as well.

The moves are widely seen as part of the government’s ongoing efforts to divide and neuter the opposition. Human Rights Watch Turkey director Emma Sinclair-Webb described it on Twitter as “another sign of the relentless assault on elected opposition parties” and said the three had been subjected to “politically motivated trials in which legal activities were criminalized.”

The chamber is dominated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and his far-right allies from the Nationalist Action Party, which together command 340 seats, giving them a simple majority. The chamber’s power has ebbed ever since Turkey’s executive presidency concentrating power in the hands of Erdogan came into effect in 2017. But changes to the constitution, for example, still require the approval of a two-thirds majority in the parliament. Hence, the opposition still has some teeth and Erdogan appears bent on removing them.

Human rights lawyer Erdal Dogan noted in a telephone interview with Al-Monitor, “In so far as the parliament exists to represent the will of the people, it could have waited for the appeals process to fully play out — that is, for the constitutional court, which also reflects the will of the people, to deliver its verdict on the lawmakers before stripping them of their immunity.” The fact that the AKP and its nationalist allies had not done so amounted to a “rape of justice,” charged CHP lawmaker Engin Altay as the chamber erupted in howls of protest, with opposition deputies banging on their lecterns and shouting “Down with fascism.”