Turkey jails Kurdish Opposition leader

Selahattin Demirtas jailed for five months for 'denigrating the Turkish nation, the Turkish Republic and the state institutions' 

Selahattin Demirtas has been sentenced to five months imprisonment
Selahattin Demirtas has been sentenced to five months imprisonment

The leader of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Opposition party Selahattin Demirtas has been sentenced to five months in jail on charges of “denigrating the Turkish nation, the Turkish Republic and the institutions of the state”.

Hours earlier, the HDP’s other leader Figen Yuksekdag was expelled from Parliament after the country’s highest court upheld her conviction for terrorism.

The two have been in police custody since November, when they were detained as part of a counter-terrorism investigation.

Thousands of HDP party members have been arrested, including at least 12 of their MPs, since Kurdish peace talks broke down in 2015. Arrests accelerated following last year’s failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which prompted a large-scale purge of government officials believed to have links to the Gulenist movement, a group led by exiled cleric Fethullah Gulan that Turkey believes was behind the failed coup. Over 45,000 government officials, journalists, police officers and teachers have been arrested.

The Turkish government accuses the HDP of links to a Kurdish militia that has been designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and NATO. However, the HDP has warned it is being targetted as part of a clampdown on government critics ahead of a controversial April referendum on whether Erdogan should be granted more executive powers.

“It is totally about the referendum,” HDP MP Hisyar Ozsoy said. “He’s committed to paralysing the HDP organisationally so that we can’t carry out an effective ‘no’ campaign.”

Erdogan has said that a referendum victory will bring stability to Turkey by creating a US-style presidency, but his opponents argue that it would lead to a dictatorship.