Turkey President blasts autonomy call by Kurdish party as 'treason'

Ankara: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday blasted a call by a leading Kurdish politician for autonomy for the country's Kurdish minority as "treason."

"What the co-leader has done is treason, provocation," Erdogan told reporters at an Istanbul airport before leaving for Saudi Arabia.

Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said at the weekend that Kurds in Turkey had to decide whether to live in autonomy or "under one man's tyranny".