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A Turkish court on Thursday handed down lengthy prison sentences to 24 pro-Kurdish politicians after finding them guilty of multiple crimes in connection with fatal street protests a decade ago.
In a case that human rights campaigners decried as a trial to silence the opposition in Turkey, the court on the outskirts of Ankara issued sentences ranging from nine to almost 43 years.
Former presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş, who has been in prison for his political speeches since 2016 despite a European Court of Human Rights order for his release, received the longest sentence of 42 and a half years on terrorism related charges. A total of 11 people were acquitted by the court.
The case goes back to 2014, when the Peoples’ Democratic party, or HDP, whose supporters are mainly Kurdish, called on the government to help the largely Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria to defend itself against a siege by jihadi group Isis.
Thousands of people subsequently took to the streets in Turkey, and 37 people were killed in clashes with police during three days of riots.
The trial was seen as part of Turkey’s crackdown on the Kurdish political movement after a peace process involving President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party, or PKK, collapsed in 2015. Thousands of Kurdish activists have been jailed.
Erdoğan has called the HDP the political wing of the PKK, an armed group listed as a terrorist organisation by the US, the UK and the EU after waging a four decade insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.
Prosecutors in the trial accused the HDP of orchestrating the 2014 protests under orders from the PKK.
The PKK’s fight within Turkey has largely ceased in recent years, although it claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Ankara in 2023. The Turkish military regularly targets the group and affiliates in northern Iraq and Syria.
The HDP and its successor party, the People’s Equality and Democracy party, or DEM, deny outright links with the PKK and have called for a negotiated end to the conflict. DEM is the Turkish parliament’s third-biggest political party.
Tülay Hatımoğulları Oruç, DEM co-chair, accused the court of acting on behalf of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development party and its far-right partner.
Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey director for Human Rights Watch, said the prosecution of elected HDP officials and executives had deprived millions of voters of their democratic representation and violated the right to political speech.
She added: “It’s a political trial . . . The justice system is used as a blunt cudgel against oppositional voices in Turkey.
“While that continues, there can be no credible talk of a softening or an improvement in the general rights environment.”
Demirtaş, who was HDP co-chair in 2014, was convicted of crimes including undermining the unity of the state and terrorism propaganda.
Among the others found guilty were Ahmet Türk, the 81-year-old mayor of the city of Mardin, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for belonging to a terrorist organisation.
Figen Yüksekdağ, a former HDP chair, received a prison sentence of more than 30 years.
A DEM official said all those found guilty would appeal. Many are already in prison from separate trials, while a handful were released pending appeals or for time served in pretrial detention.
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