{"id":2827,"date":"2017-12-21T17:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T17:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2827"},"modified":"2017-12-22T13:25:37","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T13:25:37","slug":"top-turkish-court-rejects-release-request-by-jailed-pro-kurdish-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2827","title":{"rendered":"Top Turkish court rejects release request by jailed pro-Kurdish leader"},"content":{"rendered":"

TURKEY PURGE<\/em><\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s Constitutional Court (AYM) on Thursday rejected a request for release made by Pro-Kurdish Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party Co-chair Selahattin Demirta\u015f, who has been in jail since November of last year on terrorism charges.<\/p>\n

The top court said Demirta\u015f\u2019s arrest was within the law and that there was no violation of freedom of expression or his political rights.<\/p>\n

Demirta\u015f was arrested on Nov. 4, 2016 when the government launched a crackdown on pro-Kurdish politicians following a failed coup attempt, which critics say has been expanded to target all government opponents and dissenting voices.<\/p>\n

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government accuses the HDP, the nation\u2019s third-largest party in Parliament, of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK). The HDP denies the accusation.<\/p>\n

According to AP<\/a>, New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch, criticized Demirta\u015f\u2019s trial, calling it \u201cpart of a wider pattern of repression against government critics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHolding the leader of a major opposition party in pre-trial detention for over a year on flimsy charges is another example of the political abuse of the criminal justice system we are repeatedly seeing in Turkey,\u201d said Hugh Williamson, Human Rights Watch\u2019s director for Europe and Central Asia.<\/p>\n

Demirta\u015f\u2019s lawyer Yusuf Alata\u015f told the H\u00fcrriyet Daily News<\/a> that the case \u201cis a collection of 31 different summaries of proceedings that have been compiled into a joint case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main accusation is that he is the leader of an armed organization, which is a terror offense. All of the proceedings in this case are about Demirta\u015f\u2019s speeches that he delivered as a politician. None of them contain any call for violence or an act of violence,\u201d Alata\u015f said.<\/p>\n

The Turkish Parliament stripped lawmakers of legal immunity last year, paving the way for the arrest of several HDP legislators \u2014 including Demirta\u015f and former Co-chairwoman Figen Y\u00fcksekda\u011f \u2014 on terror-related charges.<\/p>\n

The arrests follow the collapse of a fragile peace process between the state and the PKK in 2015. The group is considered a terror organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.<\/p>\n

Y\u00fcksekda\u011f lost her seat in Parliament earlier this year after an appeals court confirmed her 2013 conviction for engaging in terrorist propaganda, and she later stepped down as the HDP\u2019s co-leader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TURKEY PURGE Turkey\u2019s Constitutional Court (AYM) on Thursday rejected a request for release made by Pro-Kurdish Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party Co-chair Selahattin Demirta\u015f, who has been [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2828,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","category-turkey-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2829,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827\/revisions\/2829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}