ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The wife of Kurdish jailed politician Selahattin Demirtas said on Tuesday that she was allowed by Turkish authorities to visit her husband nearly half a year after their last meeting.
Basak Demirtas said in a tweet that her husband was “strong and in high morale as usual.”
She last visited the Kurdish politician on November 12.
Demirtas is the former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). He was jailed on November 4, 2016 for alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). He has also been accused of having a role in the death of 108 people during 2014 protests across Kurdish-majority areas in Turkey in support of the Kurdish city of Kobane in Syria after it was besieged by the Islamic State (ISIS).
Basak Demirtas said in a televised interview in October that her children “have been unable to hug their father for 19 months.”
Her latest visit was on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, with her wishing this to be her “last Eid visit to the prison.”
Tens of thousands of HDP members, officials and lawmakers have been arrested over the last decade, with numbers spiking after a failed coup attempt in July 2016 blamed on a former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Most have been jailed for terror charges.
