Wife of imprisoned Kurdish leader urges release of political prisoners in Turkey

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - Basak Demirtas, the wife of imprisoned Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas, on Friday urged the Turkish government to release prisoners immediately as the number of the novel coronavirus cases grows in the country.

"Thousands like me were unable to see their loved ones this week due to the coronavirus," she said in a video message on Twitter.

"Many people, despite their serious ailments, have been kept in prison. Hundreds of children are in jails with their mothers," she added.

"Prison wards are overcrowded, ventilation is inadequate, sunlight is rarely seen. A healthy diet is impossible. Hygiene is overlooked."

"These conditions lead to respiratory illnesses. Coronavirus causes respiratory distress, and especially sick inmates are under great risk," Demirtas said.

Demirtas' message comes as the Turkish government banned family visits for two weeks due to the coronavirus, which has infected close to 300,000 people worldwide and killed about 12,000 of them since the disease was first detected in late 2019 in China.

According to the US State Department's annual human rights report, released on March 11, since July 2016 at least 4,920 pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers, executives, and party members were in prison on a variety of charges related to terrorism and political speech.

This includes Demirtas, the former co-chair of the HDP and a previous presidential candidate, who was detained and put in prison in November 2016 along with nine other lawmakers in a crackdown that purged President Tayyip Erdogan's political rivals shortly after a failed military coup attempt.

In total, Turkey has arrested or imprisoned more than 80,000 citizens since the July 2016 attempted coup.

Ankara only lifted a state of emergency two years after the event in 2018.

Despite this, however, Ankara continues to persecute pro-Kurdish politicians, a policy brief of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) says.

As of December 2019, the Interior Ministry has suspended 28 HDP mayors in Kurdish-majority provinces, replacing them with government-appointed trustees, the FDD report added.

There are currently unconfirmed reports suggesting that there have been coronavirus cases among prisoners in Turkish jails.

However, Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul claimed on Friday that there are no confirmed coronavirus cases in prisons in Turkey, the pro-Ankara Anadolu news agency reported.

"Convicts and detainees are entrusted to the state," Gul said, adding that the country has made "diligent efforts" to protect the health of prisoners.

According to the Turkish news website Duvar English, there are reports that the government will expedite a legal amendment to reduce the time served by inmates to facilitate their early release over coronavirus outbreak fears in the facilities they are detained.

This will result in the early release of nearly 30,000 of the 300,000 prisoners.

However, the legal amendment will exclude offenses related to 'terrorism,' and most HDP members are charged with terrorist offenses.

Earlier in neighboring Iran, 70,000 prisoners had been allowed furlough due to a deadly outbreak in the country, Radio Farda reports.

HDP's co-chair Pervin Buldan stated on March 17 that the most effective way of fighting coronavirus is taking strict measures.

"We will overcome this challenge, too; however, at this precise moment, it is prisons that face the greatest risk," Buldan said. "Emergency evacuations must begin immediately."

Dr. Aykan Erdemir, a former Turkish parliamentarian and now a Senior Fellow at the FDD, told Kurdistan 24 that Turkey's overcrowded prisons are highly vulnerable to a coronavirus outbreak.

"The Turkish public's growing demand for the release of inmates, especially those in pretrial detention or convicted of political offenses, is a legitimate one," he said, adding that the government "has a duty to respect and protect the right to life of inmates, and under current prison conditions this will not be possible."

He affirmed that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) use of pretrial detention as a form of summary punishment has drawn frequent criticism.

"But the coronavirus epidemic is likely to carry this injustice to a new level by turning pretrial detention into a de facto capital punishment sentence for some of the inmates."

Editing by Kosar Nawzad