A Turkish court on Thursday sentenced the former head of a pro-Kurdish party to 42 years in prison for his alleged role in deadly 2014 protests that erupted as Islamic State group jihadists overran the Syrian town of Kobane. In jail since 2016, Selahattin Demirtas, 51, a two-time election rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was convicted of dozens of crimes including undermining state unity and the country's integrity. The court in Sincan, on the outskirts of Ankara, also sentenced the People's Democratic Party (HDP) former co-chair Figen Yuksekdag to 30 years and three months in jail, private broadcaster NTV and rights group MLSA reported. After the hearing, several lawmakers for the party, which has since been renamed the DEM, held up portraits of the two jailed leaders in the national assembly.

Fearing troubles after the case, the governors of at least 14 southern provinces with large Kurdish and Syrian communities banned demonstrations for four days, MLSA added. The court ordered the release of some politicians, including Gultan Kisanak, former mayor of the major pro-Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, but many others were handed jail terms. The case against former HDP members, including Demirtas and Yuksekdag, stems from a dark episode of the more than decade-long Syria war. Thirty-seven people died in demonstrations against the Turkish army's inaction in the face of an IS offensive against the largely Kurdish northern Syrian town. The fighting was visible from the Turkish side of the border and many in the Kurdish community viewed the army as complicit in the humanitarian disaster that followed. The jihadists were driven out of Kobane in January 2015 by US-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters that Turkey officially views as terrorists.

Turkey views the HDP as the political front of outlawed Kurdish militants who have been waging an insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984. The HDP blamed Turkish police for causing the deaths. In 2023 testimony, Demirtas slammed the case against him. "There's no single evidence about me. This is a case of political revenge, we were not legally arrested, we are all political hostages." Demirtas has been in jail in the western city of Edirne since 2016, facing multiple trials on terror-related charges that Western governments view as part of Erdogan's crackdown on political dissent. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly called for his release.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan