Turkey Keeps Prominent Opposition Figure Detained

World

July 8th, 11:37am

Ankara - Saeed Abdulrazek

Lawyers protest in Ankara on a controversial bill to control professional associations (AFP)

A Turkish court has decided to release former co-chair of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas, upholding the Supreme Constitutional Court’s decision. However, it kept him detained and rejected an appeal for his release, noting that the Constitutional Court’s decision on June 18 to set him free “pertains to a separate investigation against the politician.” One of Demirtas’ lawyers, Mahsuni Karaman, said that the Turkish authorities’ continued detention of his client is based on political motives. A recent Constitutional Court ruling has said that Demirtas’s lengthy imprisonment violated the Constitution. Demirtas, one of Turkey’s best known politicians, has been in jail since November 2016 on terrorism-related charges along with the HDP’s other co-leader, Figen Yuksekdag. They are accused of taking part in the bloody October 2014 attacks, in which demonstrators were protesting the failure of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to take a clear stance against ISIS, which occupied Kobani, the Kurdish-majority city in northern Syria. He was sentenced in 2018 to four years and eight months in prison on charges of spreading “terrorist propaganda” during a speech at a Kurdish New Year celebration in 2013. He faces a sentence of up to 142 years in jail if found guilty in the main case against him. Meanwhile, signs of a new division within the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have recently started to appear. This was revealed in a tweet by one of Erdogan's former aides, which sparked questions and speculation in the Turkish media about the possibility of the formation of a third party headed by AKP former members in just one year. An AKP leader and one of Erdogan’s media advisers Aydin Onal wrote on his Twitter account that he has rented an office in Ankaraqq with some of his associates. He called on everyone to visit them, which the media interpreted as a first indication of the emergence of a third party, following Ali Babacan’s Democracy and Progress Party, also known as DEVA.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2378091/turkey-keeps-prominent-opposition-figure-detained