Turkey's opposition HDP says lawmakers' detention a 'political operation'

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's arrest on Friday of a dozen opposition lawmakers mainly representing the country's largely Kurdish, strife-hit southeast in a terror probe lacks any legal basis and is a clear political operation, a party spokesman said. The detentions are aimed at achieving what the ruling party failed to do at the ballot box in two general elections last year, when the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) won more than 5 million votes, HDP spokesman Ayhan Bilgen said. The HDP, which has Kurdish roots and is parliament's third-biggest grouping, will show a "democratic reaction" to the detentions, Bilgen told reporters at a news conference, describing the action as an attempt to provoke a civil war. His comments were made a few hours after at least one person was killed and 40 wounded in a car-bomb attack in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the southeast. (Reporting by Gulsen Solaker; Writing by Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Nick Tattersall)