The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which will meet next week, should call on Ankara to “immediately release Demirtas” as required by the court’s judgment that “applies to his ongoing detention and to any future charges or detentions” with similar factual or legal bases, read a statement from ARTICLE 19, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Federation for Human Rights, and the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project.
Demirtas, a charismatic Kurdish politician who mounted electoral challenges against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2014 and 2018, when he campaigned from prison as former co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), has been in jail since November 2016 on allegations of ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group claiming to fight for the rights of Kurds in Turkey.
In December, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ordered Turkey to release Demirtas, saying it found several human rights violations in his case. Erdogan dismissed the ruling as hypocritical and “political” and a few weeks later, a Turkish court accepted a new indictment against Demirtas.
“The Committee of Ministers should press Turkey to immediately end this abuse of judicial proceedings aimed at harassing an opposition politician,” said Roisin Pillay from the International Commission of Jurists.
