Turkey’s Kurdish HDP party leader Selahattin Demirtas, Brussels, Belgium, January 27, 2016. Photo: Reuters
ANKARA,— A Turkish court ruled Monday that leading Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas should be released during his ongoing trial, his party said, though he will remain in prison under a previous conviction.
The ruling is significant as it comes ahead of a hearing by the European Court of Human Rights later this month, which is expected to again criticise the long pre-trial detention of Demirtas, a founder of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP).
The court in Sincan, near the capital Ankara, is hearing the main case against Demirtas on charges of “managing a terror organisation, making propaganda for a terror group and inciting criminal acts”.
However, he was expected to remain behind bars, having been sentenced in December to four years and eight months for alleged links to PKK, “terrorist propaganda”.
Demirtas, who was not present at Monday’s hearing, has been in prison since November 2016.
The charismatic politician, often dubbed the Kurdish Obama, was detained in the crackdown under the state of emergency that followed a failed coup in July of 2016.
If found guilty in the main trial, he risks 142 years in prison.
Turkish authorities often accuse the HDP of links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is listed a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.
But the Kurdish HDP party says it is being targeted because of its strong opposition to the president.
Before his arrest Demirtas was considered one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s major rivals. He came in third in last year’s presidential election despite running from his prison cell.
The HDP seeks to promote the cause of Turkey’s Kurdish minority and defend the rights of Kurds as well as those of women, gays and workers.
In 2016, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched repeated personal attacks on Demirtas, who analysts have seen as the sole politician in Turkey who comes anywhere near to rivalling his charisma.
Demirtas has made it a personal crusade to oppose Erdogan’s plan for a presidential system in Turkey, which the HDP says would lead to dictatorship.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
Read more about Turkey’s policy against Kurds
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