ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United States on Monday said that it is “concerned” about Turkey’s recent sentencing of numerous Kurdish politicians with lengthy jail terms for their involvement in 2014 protests.
“We are concerned and following these cases closely. The United States reiterates its full support for freedom of expression in Turkiye, and opposes actions intended to encroach on the right of free speech,” a spokesperson for the US state department told Rudaw English via email on Monday.
A Turkish court in Ankara last week slapped dozens of Kurdish politicians with jail terms ranging from nine to 42 for their alleged involvement in 2014 protests which turned violent.
In October 2014, the city of Kobane in northeastern Syria (Rojava) was under attack by the Islamic State (ISIS). The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), now rebranded as Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), called for street protests to ask the Turkish government to open a corridor allowing military aid from the Kurdistan Region to reach the Kurdish city. The protests turned violent and 51 people were killed and hundreds more injured.
The results of the ten-year-old case drew the ire of Kurds after lengthy jail sentences were issued for 24 Kurdish politicians, including former HDP co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, who have been jailed on terror-related charges since 2016, as well as the veteran politician Ahmet Turk who was became the mayor of Mardin municipality in March local elections.
Demirtas, who was handed down 42 years, held a press conference in Diyarbakir (Amed) in 2014 where he criticised the violence while remaining firm in his support for the protestors. The demonstrations ended on his call.
Twelve other politicians who had been on trial with them were acquitted.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project described the convictions as “unjust.”
“The ruling confirms that the Turkish authorities instrumentalized the criminal justice system to secure the politicians’ prolonged arbitrary detention on baseless charges and remove them from political life as elected representatives,” they said in a joint statement last week.
The rulings by the Ankara court come less than two months after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost the local polls. He has blamed DEM Party for his party’s failure in metropolises like Istanbul, claiming that the pro-Kurdish party supported the opposition candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu.
The DEM Party fielded its own candidate in the city and later denied supporting Imamoglu.
Turk told Rudaw on Friday that court rulings aim to silence Kurdish politicians in Turkey.
“They want to eradicate the achievements of the Kurdish people, they want to silence Kurdish politicians, they want to destroy the demands of the Kurdish people,” he said.
“We have been active in politics for many years, and we always wanted brotherhood between people. We hope that the Kurdish people enjoy freedom and equality; that is our aim,” he added.
Updated at 12:07 am on May 21, 2024
