[10] The election was however mainly a disappointment for the DTP as majority of votes in the Kurdish-dominated regions went to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP).

[9] The party however performed well during the March 29, 2009 local elections, winning 2,116,684 votes or 5.41% and doubling its number of governors from four to eight, increasing its amount of mayors from 32 to 51.

According to the Turkish Human Rights Association, the government carried out three crackdowns against the DTP between April and October 2009 in which 1,000 people were detained, including 450 who were not told what they were being charged with.

[13] After surviving a closure case in 2007,[13] on December 11, 2009, the Constitutional Court of Turkey voted to ban the DTP, ruling that the party had links to the PKK[5] and was guilty of spreading "terrorist propaganda".

[14] The 19 DTP members that remained in parliament joined the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which had already been formed in anticipation of the ban.

Meanwhile, protests broke out all over Turkey's predominantly Kurdish region and in Western cities such as Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir and lasted the whole weekend.

Protesters destroyed property and attacked police using stones and Molotov cocktails, and set street fires.

200 people, mostly Kurdish children, closed traffic and threw stones at buses in Sultangazi and Başakşehir districts.

[3] Yüksekova protests had been ongoing since Saturday as crowds of DTP supporters threw firebombs and rocks at police vehicles.

[4] December 14, 2009, over 5,000 people Diyarbakır welcomed DTP MPs which drove into the town in an open bus.

[20] Turkey's EU negotiator Egemen Bağış criticized the ruling, saying that courts should hold politicians rather than political parties responsible for unlawful actions.