Selahattin Demirtaş, HDP co-leader known as the ‘Kurdish Obama’, held with at least 11 MPs as post-coup crackdown continues. The two joint leaders of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) have been detained along with at least 10 MPs because of their reluctance to give testimony for crimes linked to “terrorist propaganda”.

Turkish police raided the Ankara home of co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş and the house of co-leader Figen Yüksekdağ in Diyarbakır, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east, early on Friday.

Demirtaş – a charismatic leader known as the “Kurdish Obama” by some admirers – and Yüksekdağ had been targeted by several separate investigations over the last months but this is the first time that either has been detained.

At least 10 other HDP parliamentarians were also detained, lawyers said, in a major escalation of the government’s crackdown on its opponents in the wake of the failed coup on 15 July. Raids also took place in the south-eastern cities of Van and Bingöl.