Turkish court sentences HDP co-leader to prison
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Turkish prosecutors sentenced the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair and a HDP lawmaker to five years imprisonment for praising a ‘terrorist organization’ in 2013, Dogan news agency said on Friday.
Istanbul court accused HDP Co-leader Selahattin Demirtas and a HDP lawmaker Sirri Suraya Onder for praising the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters and the group’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan in a speech in 2013 when the peace process was underway between PKK and the Turkish government.
Abdullah O'Calan, a founder and leader of PKK, has been in solitary confinement in Imrali island in Turkey for 15 years. He narrowly escaped the gallows. Condemned to hang for treason, his sentence was commuted to life in jail after Turkey scrapped the death penalty in pursuit of EU entry.
In summer, Turkish ruling Party AKP led by President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan supported the parliament’s move to lift immunity from many HDP members and deputies, including MPs from other political blocs.
Erdogan accuses HDP of being a political extension of PKK, but the party denies having any direct link with the group. HDP has frequently called for peaceful negotiation between the Turkish government and PKK to end the three decades of conflict between both sides that has killed 40,000 people, mostly Kurds.
PKK is a Kurdish militant organization that has waged a struggle against the Turkish state ethnic oppression since 1984, asking for Kurdish cultural and political rights in the Kurdish populated areas in the southeast Turkey.
The group has been labeled as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union, and the United States.
Editing by Ava Homa