Kurdish mayors, ex-MP remanded to prison in Turkey

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Kurdistan24) – A Turkish court in Diyarbakir on Sunday night decided to remand the Kurdish city’s Co-mayors Gultan Kisanak, Firat Anli, and a former MP Ayla Akat Ata to prison.

The public prosecutor’s office in Diyarbakir said Kisanak, Anli, and Ata of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) committed the crimes of membership to and aiding the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turkey deems the PKK a terrorist group because of its decades-long armed campaign for Kurdish rights in the country.

The Co-mayors, whose arrests last Tuesday led to protests and a week-long Internet outage in a dozen Kurdish provinces, were allowed to see their attorney only on Saturday after five days of detention.

Turkish police on Wednesday had arrested the former MP Ata who used to represent a constituency in the province of Batman.

Ata was detained as she was joining demonstrators who were protesting the detention of Diyarbakir’s mayors in defiance of a ban by the Government.

Attorney Mehmet Emin Aktar, who defends the mayors, told reporters outside the court that police and gendarmery questioned both of his clients for public speeches and statements in support of Kurdish self-rule they had made in the past.

“No solid evidence of document province any crime was presented,” said Aktar, according to a Kurdistan24 reporter in front of the court.

The deputy leader of Turkey’s main opposition the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Sezgin Tanrikulu, a human rights lawyer and Kurd from Diyarbakir, declared the court’s decision to jail Kisanak and Anli as politically motivated.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany

(Siddiq Eren contributed to this report from Diyarbakir)