Turkey tries 108 Kurdish politicians over deadly 2014 protests against army's IS response

The case against current and former members of the pro-Kurdish HDP party - including its two former co-leaders - stems from one of the darker episodes of the decade-long Syria war.

Thirty-seven people died in violent demonstrations against the Turkish army's inaction in the face of an IS offensive against the largely Kurdish northern Syrian town.

The fighting was visible from the Turkish side of the border and many in the country's Kurdish community view the army as complicit in the humanitarian disaster that followed.

Read more: Turkey, the Kurds and the demographic re-engineering of Syria

The jihadists were driven out of Kobane in January 2015 by US-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters that Turkey officially views as terrorists.

"For calling on people to protest, our members are now being accused of terrorism, and also of murder of those who died," the HDP said in a statement as the mass trial got underway.

"This is a revenge trial," HDP co-chair Mithat Sancar said.

Turkey views the HDP as the political front of outlawed Kurdish militants who have been waging an insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984.

Prosecutors accused the 108 defendants of "attacking the integrity of the state" and crimes including looting and murder.

The HDP blames Turkish police for provoking the deaths.

Prosecutors are preparing a separate case against the HDP aimed at dissolving the party and barring nearly 700 of its members from playing a role in politics for five years.

The 108 defendants put on trial in an Ankara criminal court on Monday include the party's former co-leader Selahattin Demirtas -- a two-time election rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The 48-year-old has been in jail since 2016 facing multiple trials on terror-related charges that Western governments view as part of Erdogan's crackdown on political dissent.

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