The long-imprisoned Selahattin Demirtas, former co-leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and prominent opponent of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, received an additional 3.5 years on his sentence after a Turkish court found him guilty of “insulting the president,” his lawyer announced via Twitter on Monday.
Demirtas’ lawyer, Ramazan Demir, noted the sentence marked one of the most severe punishments a Turkish court had ever handed out for insulting the president, a crime in Turkey.
The comments in question pertained to a 2015 Paris conference at which Demirtas said in a December 2015 speech that Erdogan “fluttered from corridor to corridor” in pursuit of a photo op with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Reuters. At the time, Russo-Turkish tensions were mounting over their respective Syrian interventions, culminating with Turkey shooting down a Russian warplane.
Demir related Demirtas’ acknowledgment of the comments and statement to the court, asserting “My only regret over the speech is that I said too little.”
After a 2016 military coup failed to oust Erdogan and restore secularist rule to the country, Erdogan loyalists went on a purge of alleged traitors not just in the military, but in news publications and peaceful opposition parties with tenuous, in any, ties to the insurrection. Erdogan’s government has attempted to cast blame for the coup on Pennsylvania cleric Fethullah Gülen, who denies any involvement. Ankara has offered up no evidence linking Gülen to the coup and Washington has refused all efforts to negotiate his extradition.
Demirtas, whose leadership position in the pro-Kurdish HDP already cast him as suspect, found himself on the receiving end of Ankara’s authoritarian outbursts and ended up in a prison cell.
Although incarcerated, Demirtas launched a major presidential campaign in 2018, while remaining in his cell, and secured a third-place finish. Erdogan handily won reelection.
After Erdogan’s victory, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued a ruling in November 2018, demanding he release Demirtas. The ECHR said, “judicial authorities had extended Mr Demirtas’ detention on grounds that could not be regarded as ‘sufficient’ to justify its duration.”
The ECHR’s demands went ignored. Turkey kept Demirtas in prison and piled on additional charges against him for a myriad of offenses.
Monday’s sentencing comes on the heels of increased Turkish efforts to dissolve the HDP. The party is popular in Turkey’s eastern regions and maintains pro-Kurdish policies, aiming to limit Ankara’s violent interventions in the area.
Pro-government factions assert the HDP has covert ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Marxist terrorist organization that seeks to create an independent Kurdish state and has battled the Ankaran government for decades.
The HDP has loudly protested Ankara’s claims; many of its leaders and party statements have described the move to dissolve the party as a “coup.”
Pervin Buldan, HDP co-chair, was defiant and vowed carry on the party’s mission in the face of government opposition. “As long as the HDP exists, we will continue to stand by our peoples and do democratic politics.”
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