Dilek Ocalan is a lawmaker with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
She was convicted of conducting “propaganda for a terror organization.” The case was opened against her after she attended the funeral of a PKK fighter in February 2016.
Ocalan represents Sanliurfa in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeastern region. When she entered the legislature in 2015, she was one of the youngest parliamentarians at 28-years-old.
On Thursday, she took part in an announcement detailing planned events to mark International Women’s Day on March 8 with the slogan: “Free women, free society, free life.”
On Tuesday two other HDP deputies, Ibrahim Ayhan and Ahmed Yildirim, were stripped of their parliamentary seats by a Turkish court after being convicted on terror charges.
HDP, which entered the parliament gaining 59 seats in the November 2015 election, is now down to 50 seats. A total of nine of the party’s lawmakers have been ousted from the legislature.
The Turkish parliament voted in 2016 to lift immunity from a select group of lawmakers facing terror-related charges.
