ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A top Turkish court on Friday upheld a two-and-a-half year jail sentence for a parliamentarian from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) accused of making propaganda for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The outspoken lawmaker recently revealed the controversial use of strip searches in Turkish prisons.
Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, HDP lawmaker and human rights activist, was sentenced to two years and six months on February 21, 2018 for an August 20, 2016 tweet sharing a news article about a PKK statement that said “peace would come if the government takes one step forward.”
Gergerlioglu shared the article with a comment: “This call should be evaluated properly. There is no end to this work,” referring to the decades-long conflict between Ankara and the PKK.
Nearly half a year after the court decision, Gergerlioglu was elected to the parliament on the HDP ticket.
He appealed the conviction of “making propaganda” for the PKK, and on Friday an upper court upheld the verdict, reported state-owned Anadolu Agency.
The court said that Gergerlioglu’s tweet “used the photograph of the armed members of the organization and it included expressions that justify the organization's methods that include coercion and violence.”
The PKK is an armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey. It is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara. Scores of HDP members and officials have been removed from office, and some arrested, for alleged links to the PKK. Turkish officials claim the HDP is the political wing of the PKK, but HDP denies this.
Tweeting after the court ruling, Gergerlioglu said, “The oppressors have not elected me so they cannot end my parliamentary membership.” He shared the same news article again, saying “I had only shared a news article. I did not praise any sort of violence.”
Gergerlioglu was the first person to report the alleged strip searching of prisoners and members of their families visiting them in jail. Rights groups hailed his revelations, but he was handed harsh criticism from pro-government corners.
Ozlem Zengin, deputy head of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) bloc in parliament, denied the allegations.
“No parliamentarian terrorizes parliament as much as Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu. I categorically do not believe that strip searches exist in Turkey. Such a thing does not exist,” she told the Turkish service of Euronews.
Nearly 200 rights organizations and members of civil society from Turkey and abroad sent an open letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, expressing solidarity with Gergerlioglu and demanding an investigation into “inhumane” strip searches.
“MP Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, who brought the problem up in Parliament and made it public should not be subjected to serious accusations such as ‘involvement in terrorism’ only because he is demanding justice and protection of the innocent women,” read the letter. “The authors of this report would like to underline that we are seriously concerned about long-standing mass detentions and human rights violations in Turkey. Public officials are easily accusing human rights defenders and MPs of being ‘terrorists’.”
Spokespersons for HDP’s office for foreign affairs said on Wednesday that 139 of their members and officials were arrested this week as part of a campaign of mass arrests by Turkish security forces that resulted in the arrest of 718 people for alleged ties to the PKK.
Almost all of the party’s mayors elected in 2019 have been removed from office and some of them arrested.
Summaries of proceedings have been prepared against nine HDP lawmakers, including co-chair of the party Pervin Buldan and former co-chair Sezai Temelli, the independent Duvar news outlet reported on Friday.
The Turkish public prosecutor claimed it has evidence these parliamentarians "had taken an action in terms of starting and continuing the violence-related events," referring to widespread protests in 2014 over Turkey’s inaction when Syrian Kurds were being attacked by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Kobane.
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