ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Turkey's Constitutional Court has ruled that the lengthy pre-trial imprisonment of a popular Kurdish politician violated his rights, according to a decision published in Turkey's Official Gazette on Friday. Selahattin Demirtas, the charismatic former co-leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has been jailed since November 2016, awaiting trial on a flurry of legal cases and charges related to terrorism. The court said his detention had exceeded a reasonable period and his right to freedom had been violated, ordering the payment of 50,000 Turkish lira ($7,300) in compensation to Demirtas. However, the body did not order his release. While his lawyers demand the politician be immediately set free, his release is not exactly a certainty. A lower Turkish court ruled last September that Demirtas should be released pending trial. Friday's ruling by the Constitutional Court upheld that decision against the public prosecutor's appeal. However, prosecutors then launched a new investigation into him and requested his detention again on the separate case, after a court lifted his arrest warrant. In November 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued a ruling on Demirtas' appeal of his detention, and ordered Turkey to release Demirtas. Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded by claiming that Turkey was no longer bound by the court's rulings. The human rights lawyer played a key role during peace negotiations aimed at ending the decades-long conflict between Turkey and the insurgent Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) until talks broke down in the summer of 2015. For many in Turkey, Demirtas represents a voice advocating peace and tolerance in a divisive political climate. For others, however, the party he leads is but another face of the outlawed PKK, which has fought the Turkish state since the 1980s. The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state since 1984, and is blacklisted as a terror group by Turkey, the United States and other western allies. Turkey's crackdown on the outlawed group has also ensnared thousands in prison and caught civilians in the crosshairs of bitter urban warfare. Decades of strife have claimed the lives of over 40,000 people, including civilians on both sides of the conflict, and allowed sectarian enmity to fester unchecked. A brief period of respite came between 2013 and 2015, when leaders in Ankara and Qandil entered into peace talks – which Demirtas played a key role in. However, they eventually broke down and hostilities resumed. Demirtas became a figure vilified by Turkey's increasingly partisan pro-government media. Demirtas, 47, was arrested in 2016 after he gave a speech calling on Kurds in Turkey to take to the streets in protest of developments in Kobane in Syria, where Kurdish fighters were locked in a heated battle against Islamic State (ISIS) militants.
