Green Left Party MP wins court case against Turkish parliament

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – An MP of the pro-Kurdish Green Left Party on Saturday won a case against the Turkish parliament over his unpaid lawmaker salaries during a period when he was stripped of his parliamentary status in 2021. 

The Turkish parliament was ordered to pay Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu the salaries he was not handed in 2021 when he was serving as an MP for the northwestern Kocaeli province on the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) bloc, according to documents released by the court. 

Gergerlioglu was sentenced to prison in 2018 for alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) after sharing an article about the group. In March 2021, he was stripped of his parliamentary status and arrested a month later.

Turkey’s Constitutional Court in July of the same year restored his parliamentary membership, stating that his right to be elected and engage in politics as well as his right to personal freedom and security were violated. 

The PKK is a Kurdish armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey. It has been designated as a terrorist organization by Ankara. 

“My aim is not the money, it is about honor and defending [our] rights. It is about struggling against the violation of our rights,” Gergerlioglu told Rudaw on Saturday. 

The lawmaker said that he did not expect the court to rule in his favor as he had heard from his lawyer that former parliament speaker Mustafa Sentop campaigned intensely to make him lose the case, but the Ankara court took the “right decision” by abiding to the top court ruling.

“It was a democratic decision,” he said. 

The parliament appealed the court decision, claiming that the body that took the decision cannot rule on such cases, but the appeal was rejected. 

Gergerlioglu was released from prison in July 2021 and resumed his duties as an MP. In May 2023, he was re-elected as an MP on the Green Left Party list. 

He is an active member of the parliament and is widely known for defending Kurdish rights and the rights of the ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities such as LGBTQ+ communities in the country.