Turkey's Constitutional Court has rejected a call by the second largest opposition party, the HDP, to postpone until after this summer's elections a case which could close the HDP. The decision has fuelled fears President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using the judiciary to undermine the opposition.
These are challenging times for Turkey's second-largest opposition group, the People's Democratic Party or HDP.
The Constitutional Court has already frozen the organisation's state funding and is considering a case against the HDP for alleged links to Kurdish rebels of the PKK. A decision against the party could lead to the suspension of the HDP. In a further blow, the court this week rejected a call to delay the case until after parliamentary and presidential elections that must be held by June.
"The biggest legal problem is the cloud of suspicion hanging over the party's legal existence. Will it be able to enter the elections or not," wondered Ertugrul Kurkcu, honorary president of the HDP.
"This creates a lot of problems," says Kurkcu, "Because the present leadership of the party as a whole and the former leaders all are now under threat of being banned from politics. I can tell you, since 2015, at least 20,000 people who went through the prisons are exiled, or they go into hiding."
The former HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas is already in jail in a case which has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights as politically motivated. The Ankara government rejects such charges, insisting its courts are independent.
But the HDP is the main rival to Erdogan's AKP party for the country's large Kurdish vote in what is expected to be a closely fought campaign,
"Ideally Erdogan would like to close down HDP," says Mesut Yegen of the Reform Institute, an Istanbul-based think tank, "because if this happens, then it's likely that his AK party will get more seats."
Other opposition groups in trouble
The main opposition CHP party is also facing legal woes. Its charismatic mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, widely tipped as a presidential challenger last month, was convicted of insulting an official and faces a political ban.
Emma Sinclair-Webb is the senior Turkey researcher for Human Rights Watch. She warns that the judiciary is increasingly becoming a political tool.
"The two areas where the government maintains control and gives itself a huge advantage are control of the judiciary and judicial decisions, which are then used against the opposition in a very arbitrary and restrictive way, and also control of the media and social media as well," said Sinclair-Webb
With Turkey grappling with rampant inflation, opinion polls indicate that, for the first time in two decades, Erdogan is playing electoral catch-up. But the fear is that the courts rather than the voters could decide the outcome.
"It's as if there is no law anymore. It depends on Erdogan's wishes," warned Yegen. "It means that they can be even harsher. They can even suspend all the basic sort of rules or laws. And this is why the opposition is very much concerned about the security of the elections," added Yegen.
