Turkey’s DEM Party defies ban to protest Kobane ruling

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - In defiance of bans on gatherings, the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) in Turkey held demonstrations in three provinces to protest a court ruling that handed down lengthy jail terms to Kurdish politicians.

Twenty provinces across Turkey banned social gatherings, events, and demonstrations for four days, concerned about rising tensions following a controversial ruling from a Turkish court on Thursday that sentenced the former co-chairs of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to jail time for their alleged involvement in 2014 protests in support of the city of Kobane in northern Syria (Rojava) while it was under assault by the Islamic State (ISIS). 

Selahattin Demirtas was given 42 years in prison, and Figen Yuksekdag received 30 years and three months. Both were already serving prison terms from previous cases. The court also sentenced Ahmet Turk, a veteran Kurdish politician who won the mayoralty of Mardin during the March elections, to 10 years in prison.

Despite the protest ban, the DEM Party arranged demonstrations in Adana, Diyarbakir, and Istanbul. Adana and Diyarbakir are among the provinces that had issued bans.

DEM Party leader Tuncer Bakirhan attended the protest in Istanbul and his co-chair Tulay Hatimogullari attended in Adana.

“Be sure that the Kobane Case was a complete fiasco, a total sham. It wasn't our friends who were on trial in the courtrooms; it was that rotten mentality, that worker- and woman-hating mentality, that youth-hating mentality that was on trial,” Bakirhan told the crowd in Istanbul’s Esenyurt Square.

“Those who think that they will erase us from the democratic political arena with the Kobane conspiracy case, be sure they will end up destroying themselves,” he added.

In October 2014, when Kobane was under attack by ISIS, HDP called for street protests to ask the Turkish government to open a corridor allowing military aid from the Kurdistan Region to enter the Kurdish city that sits on Syria’s border with Turkey. The protests turned violent and 51 people were killed and hundreds more were injured. 

Days after the protests began, Demirtas held a press conference in Diyarbakir where he criticized the violence while remaining firm in his support for the protestors. The demonstrations ended on his call.

“The given sentences are considered null and void by us,” Hatimogullari said in Adana.

“We are initiating the effort to further expand our struggle on democratic grounds. We have started our struggle to make them back down from the decision made in the Kobane Conspiracy Case,” she added.

The rulings by the Ankara court come less than two months after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost at the local polls. He has blamed the DEM Party for his party’s failure in metropolises like Istanbul, where he claimed that the pro-Kurdish party supported the opposition candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu.

Erdogan, however, said earlier this month that he sees a political "softening" in Turkey following his election loss. 

Bakirhan said there has been no easing up of the pressure on his party.

“We have been hearing normalization and softening messages these days, but today the HDP, Kurdish politics, and democrats are being attempted to be erased from the political scene," Bakirhan told reporters in Ankara moments after the court issued its verdict.

Updated at 9:09 pm

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