Jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas receives a further 17-month sentence for insulting Turkey’s President Erdogan, defying European court orders for his release.
ISTANBUL: Jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas has been sentenced to an additional 17 months in prison for insulting Turkey’s president.
His lawyer confirmed the new sentence on Tuesday, adding to the string of charges that have kept the former opposition leader behind bars since 2016.
The 52-year-old was convicted over speeches made at least a decade ago that were deemed to have insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Demirtas was not present at the hearing after his request to attend was denied by the judge on security grounds.
His lawyer, Ozgur Ozbek, criticised the court for rushing to a verdict and denying his team more time to prepare the defence.
“The reason the court made such a quick decision was because it was concerned about statute of limitations,” Ozbek said.
He pledged to appeal the ruling, which he said was not legally correct.
This is not the first time Demirtas has been convicted for insulting the president.
In 2021, he was handed a three-and-a-half-year sentence for criticising the government’s handling of a 2015 incident where Turkey shot down a Russian jet.
The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly demanded Demirtas’s release, issuing a binding ruling last November.
Turkey has so far ignored the European court’s orders.
Demirtas was arrested in 2016 at the height of his political career within Turkey’s Kurdish movement.
He is being held at Edirne prison in northwestern Turkey on various terror-related charges.
Despite years in prison, he still commands fierce loyalty for his support of the Kurdish minority.
Western governments view him as a political prisoner jailed after helping briefly break Erdogan’s grip on parliament.
