Kurdish people protested across Turkey after a judge sentenced Selahattin Demirtas, past co- head of the pro- Kurdish People’s Democratic Party ( HDP ) and two- day presidential candidate, to 42 years in prison.
Authorities in 20 regions banned demonstrations, social groups, and public activities for four nights in a bid to damp down Kurdish anger.
Demirtas, 51, has been in jail since 2016. Despite serving time in jail, he did well to finish second in Turkey’s 2018 national vote. Kurdish separatist group Kurdistan Workers Party ( PKK), a violent Kurdish separatist group, was finally cleared of all of his charges shortly after that election by Turkish courts.
Selahattin Demirtas during a conference in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 28, 2015. ( Kerem Uzel/Bloomberg via Getty Images )
Demirtas ‘ 42-year prison sentence was based on a number of criminal charges, many of which were related to protests in 2014 when the Islamic State attacked the predominantly Kurdish city of Kobane in northern Syria.
Turkish Kurdish residents demanded that the city’s government create a corridor to the besieged city so that it could obtain military and humanitarian aid. Turkey Kurds who had figuratively see the battle in Kobane on the horizon from their houses, were enraged by the Greek government for refusing to do so.
During a show near the Mursitpinar border crossing in Sanliurfa territory on September 26, 2014, Turkish and Syrian Kurds demonstrate against the boundary fence to cross into Kobane in neighboring Syria. ( BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images )
The ISIS battle of Kobane became a huge humanitarian catastrophe, as the area was all but obliterated, and thousands of people were killed or displaced. Turkish residents who criticized President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for certainly supporting him staged protests in the streets of Kobane.
Erdogan does n’t take criticism well, so police moved in with excessive force to halt the riots, while some of the demonstrations ‘ factional disagreements grew into street brawls. In the end, 51 people were killed, and thousands more were injured.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ( Vladimir Smirnov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP )
Demirtas supported the demonstrations on social media, but he also spoke out against the time-related crime, bringing the Kobane protests to a nearby. He was found guilty on Thursday of “attacking the dignity of the position” by contributing to the riots in Sincan, an Ankara suburb.
” There’s no second facts about me. This is a case of political punishment. We were never officially arrested. We are all social hostages, Demirtas claimed in his 2023 testimony before the judge.
The large trial had 107 additional accused besides Demirtas. One of them was another previous HDP co- head, Figen Yuksekdag, who was sentenced to 30 times and three months in prison. Ahmet Turk, a seasoned Kurdish politician, recently won the governor of Mardin in March. Turkey received a 10-year jail sentence.
Tuncer Bakirhan, current co- chair of the HDP ( which was renamed DEM during the long years of Demirtas ‘ imprisonment ) denounced the verdict as a “black stain on the history of Turkish justice” and a “legal massacre” . ,
Bakirhan claimed that Erdogan’s administration used the judges to “erase” pro-Kurdish political parties from the Greek social scene.
” We do not realize this verdict”, said Bakirhan. ” Selahattin, Figen, and those on trial in the Kobane event have been acquitted in the souls of Kurds, Turks, employees, women, and children. They are free”.
The Republican People’s Party ( CHP), the country’s largest opposition party, and Ozgu Ozel, the leader of Turkey’s largest opposition party, claimed that Erdogan intended to use the courts to thwart political dissention.
” It is a situation that is suitable for social use in every element, with its duration, its timing, and the fact that the ruling reading is postponed until after the poll”, he said of the Kobane trials.
There is no appropriate area to the stuff Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag are accused of and given, he said, when you consider the words handed to them.
In the 2024 local elections, Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party ( AKP ) lost a sizable amount, prompting Erdogan to speak of” softening” his positions and reconciling with his rivals. Propositions that opposition leaders, like Ozel and Bakirhan, said were blasted as insincere by the politicized convictions of Demirtas and his fellow defendants were exposed as being politically incorrect.
Human Rights Watch ( HRW) slammed Thursday’s convictions as” the latest move in a campaign of persecution that has robbed mainly Kurdish voters of their chosen representatives, undermined the democratic process, and criminalized lawful political speech”.
” The Turkish government’s decades-long conflict with the PKK will not be ended by using phony criminal trials to reduce democratically elected Kurdish officials from political career,” said HRW Director for Europe and Central Asia Hugh Williamson.
The Kobane test, according to HRW, was a flagrant violation of international human rights standards because the case file contained “unsubstantiated and broad assertions” from private testimony and “arbitrary” methods.
AFP observed the Demirtas story on Thursday, recalling that his conversations with the head of the banned PKK appeared close to the end of the separatist insurrection in 2016. However, Erdogan, who was concerned about Demirtas ‘ rising popularity, ordered a battalion of 200 police officers to arrest him at his residence in the Kurdish enclave of Diyarbakir. In the years that followed, Erdogan has made an effort to outlaw every pro-Kurdish organization as a covert supporter of the PKK.
