The house raids and detentions of prominent Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers on the night of November 3 capped off a week of massive assaults by the Turkish state against the opposition.

On October 29, using state of emergency laws, thousands of academics and state officials in various departments were suspended, the process of electing a university president was taken entirely out of the hands of university personnel and placed in those of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and a number of socialist and Kurdish media outlets were shut down.

The following day, the co-mayors of Amed/Diyarbakır, the unofficial capital of North Kurdistan, were taken into custody and replaced with an appointed administrator (as has been done in many other Kurdish cities and districts).