A Turkish prison administration has rejected an application for probation filed by Selçuk Mızraklı, the ousted co-mayor of Diyarbakır, the Artı Gerçek news website reported.
Mızraklı applied to Edirne Prison’s Administration and Observation Board on September 4 for release on probation, as his remaining sentence was less than one year. The board rejected his application on September 8, and although he recently reapplied, it once again denied his request on the grounds that he had not declared that he had “disassociated himself from a terrorist organization.”
Investigations into Kurdish politicians have been carried out on allegations of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Founded in the late 1970s by Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK took up arms in 1984, beginning a series of attacks on Turkish soil that sparked a conflict which cost more than 40,000 lives. The group is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, including the EU and the US.
Under the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), inmates who have completed three-fourths of their sentence and have less than one year remaining are eligible release on probation.
The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld Mızraklı’s sentence of nine years, four months on conviction of membership in a terrorist organization in October 2024, following a retrial in November 2023. The same court had previously overturned the sentence handed down in March 2020, ruling that the allegations against him had not been sufficiently investigated.
Administrative oversight boards, established in Turkish prisons in January 2021, have faced criticism for arbitrarily rejecting or delaying the parole or probation of political prisoners, particularly those imprisoned over Gülen links or pro-Kurdish political engagement, on arbitrary grounds such as “failure to display remorse.”
Mızraklı was removed from office by the interior ministry in August 2019 on the grounds of an ongoing “terrorism-related” investigation, like dozens of other elected Kurdish mayors.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) criticized the prison board’s decision as “ideologically motivated, arbitrary and unlawful,” arguing that it had no authority to dictate what kind of declaration Mızraklı should make. “The board keeps political inmates in prison in an arbitrary and vindictive manner by overstepping its authority,” the party said.
Mızraklı was transferred in 2022 to Edirne Prison, where he has been sharing a cell with Selahattin Demirtaş, the former pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chairperson who has been jailed since November 2016.
