25 July 2017•Update: 25 July 2017
VAN, Turkey
Turkey’s former opposition lawmaker is facing a 10-year imprisonment on charges of attempting to legitimize killed PKK terrorists as ‘martyrs’.
A court in eastern Turkey Tuesday accepted the indictment prepared against the former lawmaker of Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Figen Yuksekdag.
Yuksekdag is accused of making “terror propaganda” and “praising crime and criminal” in her speech on April 9, 2016 at the party’s first ordinary congress in eastern Van province.
Van’s chief public prosecutor's office submitted the indictment to Van’s 2nd Heavy Penal Court, asking it to invoke article 314 of the Turkish penal code against Yuksekdag, who is already in jail on terrorism-related charges.
The article reads: “Any person who establishes or commands an armed organization with the purpose of committing the offences listed in parts four and five of this chapter, shall be sentenced to a penalty of imprisonment for a term of ten to fifteen years”.
The indictment said that Yuksekdag in her speech had claimed that the killed PKK’s terrorists are "martyrs".
In June 2017, she was sentenced to one year and six months in prison by an Ankara court for calling PKK’s decades-long terrorist campaign, as a "national liberation movement... that stands for democracy and equality”.
Previously, Yuksekdag was removed from her seat in the parliament in February 2017 after a court upheld her initial conviction on terrorism charges last September. A month later, she lost her party membership.
Yuksekdag was elected as a deputy for the eastern province of Van in November 2015. She was detained in November 2016 along with 13 other HDP lawmakers on terrorism-related charges.
The lawmakers began facing prosecution under anti-terrorism legislation after their parliamentary immunity was lifted in March 2016.
Turkey's government accuses the HDP of being linked to the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU.
Reporting by Cemal Asan; Writing by Kubra Chohan
