Turkey's CHP deputy investigated for suggesting territorial annexation to Kurdistan Region
The legal action accusing CHP’s Sezgin Tanrikulu of “willfully and knowingly aiding a terrorist group” could cost him his seat in the Turkish Parliament.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – A Turkish public prosecutor in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir recently launched an investigation into the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chair for jokingly suggesting the Hakkari and Sirnak provinces would be annexed to the Kurdistan Region.
If proceeded further, the legal action accusing CHP’s Sezgin Tanrikulu of “willfully and knowingly aiding a terrorist group” could cost him his seat in the Turkish Parliament where he represents an Istanbul constituency.
“We will annex Sirnak and Hakkari to Southern Kurdistan anyways, [they] will be liberated,” Tanrikulu told a friend over the telephone according to a summary of the investigation written in April.
Sirnak and Hakkari are two of Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish provinces bordering the Kurdistan Region which seeks independence from Iraq.
The prosecutor though noted in his indictment that Tanrikulu was laughing when he mentioned the territorial annexation.
Tanrikulu, himself a Kurd, a self-described social democrat and long-time human rights lawyer could be tried with 30 months to 15 years of imprisonment.
He faces charges of aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) for his remarks about and attendance in Kurdish political events in his home city of Diyarbakir.
Kurdistan24’s Ankara bureau said no legal basis for wiretapping Tanrikulu’s telephone was provided in the indictment.
A May 2016 bill proposed by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to strip lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution got support from the CHP as well as the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
The move has so far disproportionately targeted the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers, resulting in the imprisonment of 12 of its MPs, including the party’s co-leader Selahattin Demirtas.
As of June, two HDP lawmakers have been kicked out of the Parliament as proceedings against several others are ongoing.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany