UPDATE 22 APRIL: The Supreme Election Board, after eight hours of discussions, has reinstated the candidacy of seven independent candidates.
The Baord had vetoed 12 mostly Kurdish applicants, including two current MPs.
Six Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) candidates and one independent were re-instated. There was no word about the other five who had been blocked.
Protests broke out in several cities across Turkey, with at least one person shot and killed by police on Wednesday, after the board's initial decision. br>
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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Strasbourg, France last week, taking questions from the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly. When French MP Muriel Marland-Militello, whose grandfather was an Armenian born in Istanbul and escaped Turkey in 1915, asked how he would guarantee freedoms for religious minorities in Turkey, Erdogan said, “I believe this friend is French. She is also 'French” to Turkey', which is a saying in Turkish meaning that 'you don’t know anything about it'."
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