Pro-Kurdish Turkish legislator gets 18 years in prison
A court in Turkey has sentenced a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) to 18 years in prison on charges of membership in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group and spreading propaganda as the Ankara government presses ahead with a clampdown on members of the opposition party.
The Van High Criminal Court found the defendant, Lezgin Botan, guilty of “damaging the unity and territorial integrity of the state, membership in a terrorist organization and disseminating related propaganda, and encouraging criminal acts,” Turkish-language daily newspaper Evrensel reported.
In a related development, the 17th High Criminal Court in the capital Ankara sentenced another pro-Kurdish deputy, Aysel Tugluk, to 10 years in prison on charges of “being the leader of a terror organization.”
Tugluk said in her defense before the court that the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) was not an extension of the PKK.
“The DTK has never called for violence. It serves as a legal platform that seeks a democratic solution to the Kurdish question,” she commented.
On December 26, 2016, Turkish security forces arrested Tugluk, a senior official of the HDP, in Ankara as part of an investigation launched by the Diyarbakir Chief Public Prosecutor's Office against the PKK and the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an alliance of pro-Kurdish groups.
On November 3, 2017, the Diyarbakir 5th High Criminal Court pro-Kurdish opposition lawmaker Selma Irmak to ten years in prison.
The court said that Irmak was sentenced to 7 years and 6 months in prison over PKK membership, and 2 years and 6 months for promoting its policies.
The prosecutor had initially sought a 52.5-year jail sentence for the pro-Kurdish legislator.
A shaky ceasefire between the PKK, which has been calling for an autonomous Kurdish region since 1984, and the Turkish government collapsed in July 2015. Attacks on Turkish security forces have soared ever since.
Turkish ground and air forces have been carrying out operations against the PKK positions in the country’s troubled southeastern border region as well as Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and northern Syria.
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