Imprisoned Pro-Kurdish leader faces new charges for 'insulting' Erdogan
A Turkish public prosecutor in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir filed an indictment against Demirtas' remarks in a speech in August 2016 in which he criticized Erdogan who accused him of "collaboration with terrorists."
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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - The imprisoned co-leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas on Friday faced new charges for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
A Turkish public prosecutor in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir filed an indictment against Demirtas' remarks in a speech in August 2016 in which he criticized Erdogan for accusing him of "collaboration with terrorists."
The prosecutor demanded a prison sentence of one year and ten months to ten years and four months for Demirtas.
In his speech, Demirtas said Erdogan was the one that should be charged with the crime for his government's previous alliance with the US-based Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen's movement.
Back then Demirtas also attacked the government for removing elected Kurdish mayors and questioned President's motives in mass purging state employees for alleged ties with Gulenists whom Erdogan blamed for the July coup attempt against his rule.
According to a December 2016 Reuters account, Erdogan's lawyers have so far filed more than 1,800 cases against people including cartoonists, a former Miss Turkey winner, and schoolchildren on accusations of insulting the president.
The prosecutor separately said Demirtas had also "openly incited committing crimes," said Kurdistan24's Diyarbakir Bureau.
Police detained Demirtas and HDP's then co-chair Figen Yuksekdag as well as 11 other lawmakers in early November 2016.
He is already serving two other prison sentences in a supermax prison in the northwestern city of Edirne near the Bulgarian border.
Prosecutors have previously asked for a jail sentence of up to 142 years for Demirtas in a separate case, accusing him of having links to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a charge he has denied.
A crackdown on the HDP and its affiliates has seen seven thousand party members including over a dozen pro-Kurdish lawmaker and some 80 mayors detained.
Editing by Ava Homa