Turkey’s top appeals court has upheld a prison sentence of more than nine years handed down to a Kurdish mayor who was removed from office in 2019 and stood trial on terrorism-related charges, Turkish Minute reported, citing the Voice of America’s (VOA) Turkish edition.
The decision of the 3rd Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals was the second decision the court made concerning Selçuk Mızraklı, the former co-mayor of the predominantly Kurdish province of Diyarbakır, who was retried after the court’s initial decision in December 2022 that overturned his sentence.
At the time the court declined to uphold Mızraklı’s conviction on the grounds that the allegations against the former mayor had not been sufficiently investigated. Mızraklı was convicted by the Diyarbakır 9th High Criminal Court in March 2020 and sentenced to nine years, four months on charges of terrorist organization membership, a charge frequently faced by Kurdish politicians in Turkey due to their alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK has been leading an armed insurgency against Turkey’s security forces since the ’80s in a campaign that has claimed the lives of some 40,000 people. The group is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.
Mızraklı, a member of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was removed from office by the Ministry of Interior on August 19, 2019 on the grounds of an ongoing “terrorism-related” investigation, like dozens of other democratically elected Kurdish mayors.
In November 2023 Mızraklı was given the same sentence in his retrial, which he appealed at the Supreme Court of Appeals, which this time upheld the sentence.
The court’s decision was relayed to Mızraklı’s lawyers on Wednesday, who vowed to challenge it at the Constitutional Court.
The lawyers told VOA that if the top court also rules against Mızraklı, they will take his case to the European Court of Human Rights due to what they said is the violation of his fundamental rights.
Mızraklı, a medical doctor by profession, has been behind bars since October 2019. He was initially put in a prison in central Kayseri province and transferred to Edirne Prison in 2022 where he became the cellmate of Selahattin Demirtaş, a former HDP co-chairperson who has been jailed since November 2016.
‘Judicial coup’ amid reconciliation efforts
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), the successor to the HDP, condemned the top court’s decision, describing it as a “judicial coup” and “null and void” for the residents of Diyarbakır who voted for Mızraklı.
The party said in a statement that the sentence handed down to Mızraklı, who was elected with the votes of hundreds of thousands of people, violates the people’s right to elect as well as the public will.
Mızraklı was elected with 62 percent of the vote in Diyarbakır in the local elections of March 2019.
The top court’s decision comes at a time when there are claims of a reconciliation between the DEM Party and the Public Alliance, made up of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its far-right ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
When the Turkish parliament reopened on October 2, MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli surprised many when he, at the end of the session, walked over to the DEM Party group in parliament and shook hands with some of the party members.
Bahçeli said in a statement to reporters later that since a new term is beginning in the parliament, it is important to ensure an atmosphere of peace.
“While calling for peace in the world, it is important for us to maintain peace in our country,” he said.
Bahçeli and his ally, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have mostly distanced themselves from the DEM Party and its predecessors, frequently accusing them of having links to the PKK.
The handshake has led to questions of whether the Public Alliance was softening its stance against the DEM Party, with many asking whether it could be the harbinger of a new era in Turkish politics.
On Wednesday Erdoğan lauded Bahçeli for his reaching out to the DEM Party, saying there is need for more dialogue among the parties given the events taking place in Turkey’s neighborhood, such as the conflict in the Middle East.
Police raid DEM Party building
Meanwhile, police raided the provincial office of the DEM Party in the eastern province of Iğdır in the early hours of Thursday and detained eight people including the DEM Party’s provincial co-chair, Mehmet Selçuk, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The police raid and the detentions were part of an investigation into the detonation of a bomb by the PKK in Iğdır in September 2015 that claimed the lives of 13 policemen, Anadolu said.
The DEM Party called the detentions politically motivated on X and accused the police and the judiciary of acting as the “baton” of the government.
