Turkey court sentences pro-Kurdish leader to eight years

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - A Turkish court in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Tuesday sentenced the co-leader of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) Kamuran Yuksek to eight years and nine months in prison for membership in an armed "terrorist group."

The heavy penal court also issued an arrest warrant for Yuksek who was being tried in absentia, said Kurdistan24 Diyarbakir Bureau.

Yuksek's attorney, Mesut Bestas objected to the ruling on the ground that he was never given public prosecutor's legal opinion that led to the sentence.

Yuksek has already served in a Turkish prison for five months in a pre-trial detention before being released in October 2016.

The other DBP co-chair Sebahat Tuncel is already in jail. She was arrested a month later during protests over the detention of other Kurdish politicians of Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

DBP is HDP's sister party that is exclusively active in the Kurdish provinces.

Turkish authorities accuse both parties of being political extensions of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has been fighting troops for larger Kurdish rights.

DBP won the municipalities of more than 100 towns and cities, including three metropolitan areas across the Kurdistan of Turkey in 2014 local elections.

The Turkish Government has seized the administration of about at least 83 DBP municipalities in the aftermath of the failed military coup attempt in summer against the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Successive declarations of self-rule in several cities and townships, as well as the reignition of the PKK-Turkey conflict after the collapse of a ceasefire, led to the arrest of hundreds of party officials, city council members and dozens of mayors in the past two years.

According to Tuncel, 2500 members of her party are held in prisons across Turkey as of November 2016.

Editing by Ava Homa