Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) has called on the government to immediately release prominent Kurdish politicians Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ among others jailed in the high-profile Kobani case, citing binding rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Committee of Ministers, Turkish Minute reported.
Demirtaş, a vocal critic of the Turkish government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was initially arrested on November 4, 2016 on charges including “dissemination of terrorist propaganda” and alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). In May 2024 Demirtaş was sentenced to 42 years in prison for allegedly undermining state unity during the Kobani protests, which erupted across Turkey on October 6-8, 2014, when the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) laid siege to the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani. Particularly intense in the predominantly Kurdish southeastern provinces, the protests resulted in 37 deaths.
Although his release was ordered in 2019 following a prior ruling by the ECtHR, Demirtaş was almost immediately re-arrested on reclassified charges involving the same events.
The HDP has since been succeeded by the DEM Party.
In a statement on Friday the DEM Party’s Law and Human Rights Commission referred to the Committee of Ministers’ September decision, which emphasized the binding judgment of the ECtHR and reminded Ankara that Demirtaş’s prolonged detention was intended to suppress political pluralism and curtail democratic debate, particularly in the lead-up to elections. It urged Turkish authorities to take concrete steps to strengthen freedom of expression and political participation.
The decision also noted the Yüksekdağ and Others judgment in 2022, in which the European court found that the lifting of parliamentary immunity and the subsequent detention of several pro-Kurdish lawmakers, including former HDP co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ, violated the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The ruling underscored that their arrests lacked legal basis and amounted to a restriction of political pluralism. The committee urged Turkey to release Demirtaş without delay and announced that the case would be monitored at three-month intervals.
In July the Strasbourg court again found Turkey in violation of the ECHR, saying Demirtaş’s pretrial detention for more than four years had “pursued an ulterior purpose, namely that of stifling public debate and limiting the scope of democratic debate.” It also criticized Turkey’s Constitutional Court for taking more than four years to rule on his appeal.
Despite the judgment a Turkish court rejected a release request, arguing that the decision had not yet become final. The move drew strong criticism from the Union of Turkish Bar Associations, which said the government was obliged to comply immediately under both the ECHR and Turkey’s own constitution.
The DEM Party also argued that the Kobani trial, which involves more than a dozen former HDP officials, is “baseless” and that all detainees should be freed. The party listed those still behind bars along with Demirtaş and Yüksekdağ, including Ali Ürküt, Nazmi Gür, Alp Altınörs and several others.
“… The decision of the Committee of Ministers must be implemented and our friends must be released. … In order not to further undermine confidence in justice and to strengthen faith in peace at a time when expectations for social peace are rising, our friends must be released immediately,” the statement underlined.
The Kobani trials are widely seen as politically charged and carry broad implications for Turkey’s Kurdish political movement. Government policy toward Kurdish politicians has hardened since the collapse of peace talks with the PKK in 2015, leading to a more nationalist approach under the administration of Erdoğan.
The DEM Party’s call comes at a sensitive moment amid the Turkish government’s ongoing peace efforts with the outlawed PKK, an initiative they referred to as “Terror-Free Turkey.” The renewed peace process was initiated in October 2024 by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli, a key government ally. Bahçeli publicly called on jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan to urge the militant group to lay down its arms. Öcalan responded in February with a message calling on the PKK to disarm and disband. The militants burned their weapons in northern Iraq as a symbolic first step on July 30.
There are growing expectations that the Turkish government will reciprocate the PKK’s move with legal steps, including protections for militants who lay down their arms and measures to expand the political and cultural rights of the country’s Kurds. However, critics say the government has yet to take meaningful steps toward reconciliation while key Kurdish figures remain behind bars.
