Pro-Kurdish lawmaker sentenced to 20 months in jail

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – A former member of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) on Thursday was given a 20-month jail sentence.

Former HDP lawmaker Nursel Aydogan, who represented the Diyarbakir region, had her Parliamentary membership revoked in early May.

Aydogan is charged with “spreading propaganda for a terrorist organization” due to a speech she gave at the funeral of a Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) member in 2012.

The indictment was prepared by the Maras Chief Prosecutor’s Office and approved by the Maras Second Heavy Penal Court, according to local Turkish media.

Lawyers will appeal the sentence after an official announcement of the final judgment.

The HDP lawmaker had previously been detained as part of operations against the HDP in November 2016 but released on April 21, 2017, with a ban to travel abroad.

Earlier this month, authorities issued her another arrest warrant.            

Aydogan’s term of imprisonment was the first conviction of a sitting member of parliament in decades in Turkey.

An ethnic Turk, born in the northwestern city of Bursa, Aydogan was elected a representative for the Kurdish Diyarbakir Province in the November 2015 general elections.

Since November 2016, the HDP’s co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag have been imprisoned along with 11 other HDP lawmakers.

The detained are accused of having links to the outlawed PKK, who have waged a political resistance against the Turkish government since a two-year ceasefire broke down in 2015.

The HDP has nearly 5,000 of its members in prisons following a failed military coup last July.

Editing by G. H. Renaud