Witnessing the 2016 Turkish coup attempt and pointing out previous repression of democratic forces by martial powers, the HDP strongly opposed the coup. The HDP was first ignored and put left out of the post-coup national truce while the Turkish purges targeted alleged members of the Gülen movement. From September 2016, the Turkish judiciary started to submit HDP elected officials to anti-terrorism accusations. As of March 2018, the MP status of seven HDP representatives had been revoked and six more representatives, including the ex-chairman Demirtaş, remained under arrest, disturbing widely the HDP's ability to communicate and be active on the political scene. In December 2020 HDP co-deputy head for local governments Salim Kaplan said that "since 2016, 20,000 of our members have been taken into custody and more than 10,000 of our members and executives have been sent to jail." and 48 municipalities have been seized by the government.