Selahattin Demirtaş

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Demirtaş at a parliamentary group meeting (2016)

Selahattin Demirtaş (born April 10, 1973 in Palu ) is a Turkish politician and former co-chair of the Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP). In the 2014 presidential election , he ran as one of three candidates against Erdoğan . He was arrested in November 2016 and has been in custody in a Type F prison in Edirne ever since .

Family, education and work

The second of seven children of the married couple Tahir and Sadiye Demirtaş grew up in Palu. His father worked as a self-employed plumber. The family belongs to the Zaza population . At the age of 18 he decided to get involved politically. At that time, at a funeral service for a Kurdish politician who was murdered by the security forces, he witnessed how the police opened fire on the crowd and shot many mourners. Demirtaş studied ship management and administration in Izmir and Ankara Law . He worked as a human rights lawyer and rose in the Kurdish movement. He was later elected to the board of directors of the human rights organization İnsan Hakları Derneği in Diyarbakır , where he headed the branch there. He is also a member of Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı (TİHV) and Amnesty International .

Demirtaş became politically active in 2007 in the Democratic Toplum Partisi (DTP), which was headed by his older brother Nurettin Demirtaş (* 1972), who was imprisoned for more than ten years because of his PKK membership.

Banner for the 2014 presidential election ("Democratic change, peace-loving Turkey")

His brother Nurettin joined the PKK fighters in the northern Iraqi Kandil Mountains against the jihadist militia " Islamic State " (IS). Nurettin Demirtaş was injured in air strikes by the Turkish armed forces in summer 2015 on PKK positions, in which around 260 fighters were killed and hundreds of people injured. Selahattin Demirtaş repeatedly distanced himself from all forms of violence, including that of the PKK.

Selahattin Demirtaş is married to the teacher Başak Demirtaş and has two daughters.

Political career

Demirtaş ran nominally as an independent single candidate in the Turkish parliamentary elections in 2007 in order to circumvent the ten percent threshold for parties that has been in force in Turkey since 1982 . He was directly elected to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey as a member of the Diyarbakır Province . After the ban on the DTP on December 11, 2009, Demirtaş joined the successor party Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi (BDP). On February 1, 2010, he was elected the new party leader at the party conference in Ankara. In order to be able to bypass the threshold clause in the parliamentary elections on June 12, 2011 , Demirtaş resigned as chairman in April 2011 and left the BDP; so he was re-elected to parliament as a nominally independent. In September 2011 he was re-elected party chairman at the BDP party convention in Ankara.

Demirtaş 'result by provinces (2014 presidential election)

In June 2014 he joined the leftist party HDP and was elected co-chair with Figen Yüksekdağ ; the party structurally has a dual leadership of a man and a woman. A week later, he was nominated as the HDP's candidate for the 2014 presidential election, in which he came third with 9.77%. Michael Martens sees this “remarkable” result as Demirtaş's “breakthrough” in public perception, which he characterizes as a capable election campaigner through his humorous, popular and rhetorically skilful appearances. In other western media, Demirtaş has been referred to as the “Turkish Obama” because of his appearance and demeanor, who remains statesmanlike calm despite personal attacks against the “handsome boy”, “pop star” and “unbeliever” and a deadly attack on an HDP event have.

In the parliamentary elections on June 7, 2015 Demirtaş ran successfully for the Istanbul province. In this election, the HDP received 13.1 percent of the vote; it overcame the ten percent threshold for entry into the Turkish parliament. Demirtaş, who had been branded as a “terrorist representative” and “un-Islamic” by the ruling AKP, announced that he would campaign for the rights of all minorities, not just those of the Kurds, in addition to ethnic and religious rights, especially women and homosexuals. His main political task is to defuse the ongoing Kurdish conflict . Demirtaş rejected a coalition with the previously sole ruling ( Cabinet Davutoğlu III ), Islamic-oriented AKP and saw the election result as a success for the secular left forces.

Two days after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced legal action against HDP parliamentarians, according to media reports, an investigation was launched against Demirtaş on July 30, 2015 on charges of inciting armed protests against Turkey's lack of support in the defense of Kobanê against the Islamic State initiated.

Election rally with Demirtaş (2015)

In the early parliamentary election on November 1, 2015 , the HDP received 10.8 percent of the vote and 59 of the 550 seats in parliament. On November 23, 2015, the HDP announced that Demirtaş's armored vehicle had been shot, assuming it had been attempted. Turkish authorities disagreed with this account, and Demirtaş filed a criminal complaint.

In May 2016, at the instigation of President Erdoğan, the immunity of numerous HDP members in the Turkish parliament , including Demirtaş's, was lifted. After the attempted coup in Turkey in mid-July 2016, a state of emergency was declared in the country . On October 18, Demirtaş warned of a dictatorship in Turkey.

On April 25, 2018, the HDP announced that it would nominate Selahattin Demirtaş for the upcoming 2018 presidential election. Demirtaş ran even though he was in custody at the time. He was one of the six presidential candidates.

Law enforcement and litigation

On November 3, 2016, Demirtaş, co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ and other HDP MPs were arrested. On the initiative of the Erdoğan government, they are accused of “terrorist propaganda and membership in an armed terrorist organization (PKK)”. The arrest of the politicians followed the closure of 15 pro-Kurdish media outlets, including the daily Özgür Gündem and the news agency Dicle Haber Ajansı (DIHA). In February 2017 Demirtaş applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECM).

On the morning of March 31, 2017, Demirtaş started a hunger strike in solidarity with more than 100 political prisoners who are on hunger strike to protest the conditions of detention in a state of emergency. The strike was ended on the evening of the same day, as the prison authorities vowed a clear improvement.

According to his wife, Demirtaş knew of his imminent arrest months beforehand. Many friends abroad gave him the opportunity to flee to them, but Demirtaş refused. While thousands are being arrested, as co-party chairman he can only choose the resistance.

One of his lawyers, Mahsuni Karaman, said there was not a single piece of evidence in the indictment . There are only speeches from parliament and from election campaign events as well as tapped telephone calls. The latter is illegal, as it  is said to have happened before his parliamentary immunity was lifted .

Hasip Kaplan, another lawyer from Demirtaş, was sentenced on January 24, 2018 to 3 years, 1 month and 15 days in prison for propaganda for a terrorist organization.

In January 2018, Selahattin Demirtaş was sentenced to pay 15,000 Turkish Lira for insulting the President. Selahattin Demirtaş had called Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a thief because he and some of his family members were involved in a corruption process.

On February 20, 2018, Selahattin Demirtaş was sentenced to 5 months in prison for allegedly insulting the Republic of Turkey, the Turkish nation, the Turkish state and its institutions.

On September 7, 2018, he was sentenced to 4 years and 8 months in prison for a speech he gave in 2013 for terrorist propaganda. On November 20, 2018, the ECM decided that Demirtaș had to be released from custody. According to the judges, Demirtaş's arrest constitutes an unlawful interference with the freedom of expression of the people and does not allow him to exercise his mandate as a member of parliament. The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan then stated that the decision of the ECM was not binding on Turkey. On December 4, 2018, the judgment from the first instance of September 7, 2018 was confirmed in the second instance. So he is no longer considered a prisoner on remand, but a convicted prisoner.

On December 22, 2020, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Demirtaş should be released from custody immediately because his rights had been violated in five areas. He would also be entitled to a total of 60,400 euros for financial damage, immaterial damage and compensation for costs and expenses. In 2018, the Strasbourg court ordered the politician's release because the long pre-trial detention was unjustified. Turkey did not implement the judgment, although as a member of the Council of Europe it is bound by the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. The Turkish President Erdoğan criticized the recent judgment: The ECM could not decide on behalf of the Turkish courts. The detainee had not previously exhausted all domestic legal remedies in Turkey, the ECHR had introduced a politically motivated special regulation for Demirtaş (the ECHR had argued that according to the human rights convention, legal remedies at national level can only be taken if they are effective, hence a violation of convention rights; in the current Turkish justice system, however, its effectiveness is doubtful). According to Erdoğan, the ruling contradicts an earlier ECHR ruling on the former Spanish party Batasuna , which was suspected of being the political wing of the terrorist organization ETA , but which has never been adequately proven. After the judgment became known, there was a cyber attack on the website of the ECHR, to which the Turkish hacker group Anka Neferler Tim allegedly claimed responsibility . A new arrest warrant for Demirtaş has now been issued. According to the court, an application by the politician to the ECM is still pending.

International reactions

United States

After prosecutors called for a total of 142 years in prison, State Department press secretary John Kirby voiced concerns about the exorbitant sentence.

Germany

The then Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier criticized Demirtaş's arrest on November 3, 2016 and called the Turkish ambassador for consultations.

Even after the demand for a sentence of 142 years was announced, the Turkish ambassador was called to make statements.

Denmark

After the announcement of the demand for a sentence of 142 years, Denmark also summoned the Turkish ambassador to make statements.

writer

During the pre-trial detention in Edirne Demirtaş wrote twelve short stories - "Stories from the world of the common people and stories about the insane simultaneity of completely different worlds". The book published by Penguin Verlag is called Dawn (in the original Seher ); According to Günter Wallraff, the volume is an amazing literary debut. Eva Krafczyk writes: “Demirtas became a writer in prison and created space for himself with words.” (…) He “renounces accusatory pathos - the hardships of life are also visible. . ". The German PEN center named Demirtaş an honorary member on December 4, 2018. His second book, Devran, was published in 2019.

Web links

Commons : Selahattin Demirtaş  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Turkey election 2015: Kurdish Obama is the country's bright new star. In: The Guardian , June 8, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b Hasnain Kazim : Demirtas' King of the Kurds. In: Spiegel Online , June 8, 2015.
  3. ↑ a b How Kurds teach Erdogan to fear. In: Der Tagesspiegel . May 21, 2015, accessed December 28, 2015 .
  4. ↑ a b c Michael Martens : The man who stood up to Erdogan. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 8, 2015.
  5. ↑ Iraqi Kurds call on PKK to withdraw. In: The time . August 1, 2015, accessed December 28, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Pinar Tremblay: Demirtas looks beyond the 'Kurdish vote'. ( Memento of July 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) in: Al-Monitor.com , July 3, 2014.
  7. ↑ Erdogan calls for the end of immunity. Kurdish MPs are also in their sights. In: tagesschau.de . July 29, 2015, accessed July 30, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Turkey: Justice investigates the head of the pro-Kurdish HDP. DiePresse.com , July 30, 2015, accessed on July 30, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Shot at car by HDP boss Demirtas? In: tagesschau.de , December 23, 2015.
  10. ↑ a b zeit.de November 4, 2016: HDP calls arrests "political lynching" In: Die Zeit , November 4, 2016.
  11. ↑ HDP boss Demirtas warns of dictatorship in Turkey. In: DiePresse.com , October 18, 2016
  12. ↑ Leading Kurdish politicians arrested. In: tagesschau.de , November 4, 2016.
  13. ↑ Police arrest the chiefs of the pro-Kurdish HDP. In: Spiegel Online , November 4, 2016.
  14. ↑ Deniz Yücel: "You are a bandit and so is your public prosecutor". In: WeltN24 . October 3, 2016, accessed November 3, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Steinmeier appoints Turkish chargées In: WeltN24 . November 3, 2016. Retrieved November 3, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Turkey: Further pro-Kurdish media closed by decree. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 30, 2016.
  17. ^ A b Daniel Steinvorth: Strasbourg calls for the release of Erdogan's opponent Demirtas. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 20, 2017, accessed on December 5, 2018 .
  18. ↑ zeit.de March 31, 2017
  19. ↑ Captured HDP boss Demirtas is eating again. Archived from the original on April 4, 2017 ; Retrieved on April 3, 2017 (Swiss Standard German).
  20. ↑ "Selahattin Demirtaş cezaevinde 12 kilo verdi" . In: NTV . November 13, 2017 ( com.tr [accessed November 16, 2017]).
  21. ↑ Marco Kauffmann Bossart: Demirtas' Twitter account makes Erdogan nervous | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . November 3, 2017, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed November 16, 2017]).
  22. ↑ Kurdistan24: Imprisoned HDP leader's lawyer sentenced to 3 years in Turkey . In: Kurdistan24 . ( kurdistan24.net [accessed July 12, 2018]).
  23. ↑ Kurdistan24: Jailed Kurdish leader Demirtas, MP sentenced for 'insulting' Erdogan . In: Kurdistan24 . ( kurdistan24.net [accessed July 12, 2018]).
  24. ↑ HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş sentenced to 5 months in prison . In: DailySabah . ( dailysabah.com [accessed July 13, 2018]).
  25. ↑ Reuters Editorial: Former head of Turkey pro-Kurdish party sentenced to 4 years in ... In: US ( reuters.com [accessed September 10, 2018]).
  26. ^ Turkey: Human Rights Court demands the release of Selahattin Demirtaş. Retrieved December 5, 2018 .
  27. ^ Prison Sentences of Demirtaş and Önder Upheld. Retrieved December 5, 2018 .
  28. ↑ http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-207173
  29. ↑ https://www.hurriyet.de/news_tuerkei-praesident-erdogan-kritisiert-europaeischen-gerichtshof-fuer-menschenrechte_143543733.html
  30. ↑ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-23/europe-s-human-rights-court-hit-by-cyberattack-after-turkey-case
  31. ↑ https://rsw.beck.de/aktuell/daily/meldung/detail/egmr-tuerkei-muss-oppositionspolitiker-freilassen
  32. ^ Kurdistan24: US blasts Turkey for proposed Demirtas sentence. Kurdistan24, accessed on July 12, 2018 .
  33. ↑ WORLD: HDP leaders in custody: Steinmeier appoints Turkish chargé d' affaires . In: THE WORLD . November 4, 2016 ( welt.de [accessed August 14, 2018]).
  34. ↑ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Turkey seeking up to 142 years in jail for co-head of pro-Kurdish opposition party | DW | January 17, 2017. Accessed July 12, 2018 .
  35. ↑ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Turkey seeking up to 142 years in jail for co-head of pro-Kurdish opposition party | DW | January 17, 2017. Accessed July 12, 2018 .
  36. ↑ Gerd Brendel: Stories about a Kafkaesque system , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, June 19, 2018, accessed on June 20, 2018
  37. ↑ WDR3, January 9, 2019
  38. ↑ Review in Medienhaus Bauer, Marl, Recklinghausen Zeitung January 9, 2019; Literature section, p. 10
personal data
SURNAME Demirtaş, Selahattin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish Kurdish politician (HDP)
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH Palu (Elazığ) , Turkey