The new Turkey
Gültan Kışanak.
Former lawmaker of the dominantly Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP)

08-Feb-2019 16:04

2 February 2019:

Turkish court sentences former Kurdish lawmakers over terror charges

A Turkish court on Friday have sentenced two veteran Kurdish politicians to lengthy prison terms for membership to a terrorist organisation, Milliyet newspaper reported

Gültan Kışanak, a former lawmaker of the dominantly Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and the former co-mayor of the southeastern province of Diyarbakır was sentenced to 14 years and three months in prison. 

Kışanak and the other co-mayor of Diyarbakır, Fırat Anlı were arrested in 2016 on charges that they had disseminated the propaganda of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an armed group that has been fighting inside Turkey for more than three decades. Turkish government replaced Kışanak and Anlı as mayors of Diyarbakır with an appointed mayor a day after two politicians' arrest. 

Kışanak in prison  together with other female prisoners authored a book on women’s struggle in political parties titled “The Color Purple of Kurdish Politics”. 

The criminal court in the eastern province of Malatya also handed a 15 year prison sentence to Sebahat Tuncel, a former deputy of the HDP and the co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).

While Tuncel, who has been on hunger strike for two weeks, could not attend the hearing on Friday due to health problems, Kışanak said in court that she had been denied her right of defence throughout the trial.

“I am here because what I did was right, legal, legitimate, and humane. I never do something I do not believe. If I did something, I did it because I believed in it, and I always defend it. Everything I did fell under the limits of democratic policy making,” Kışanak said. Source