ANKARA: The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday ordered Turkey to immediately release jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas.
In their ruling, the chamber’s judges said the 47-year-old’s human rights had been violated and his pre-trial detention for years served as a cover for narrowing pluralism in the country.
The court found that Turkey had interfered with the freedom of expression of the former leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) by lifting his parliamentary immunity and violated his right to be elected for parliament.
Demirtas, who has been in prison on terror-related charges since November 2016, was a two-time presidential candidate against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and co-chaired the HDP between 2014 and 2018.
He faces 142 years of imprisonment over his political actions during 2014 protests in southeastern provinces of Turkey where he is accused of inciting street demonstrations against the siege of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani by Daesh militants. The protests led to the deaths of 37 civilians.
Europe’s top human rights court also ordered Turkey to pay Demirtas 60,400 euros ($73,540) in damages, costs, and expenses.
“Turkey as a contracting party to the European Convention has undertaken the obligation to implement all rulings of the European Court,” Massimo Frigo, senior international lawyer at the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), told Arab News.
“The Demirtas ruling by the court is final and should be executed immediately, including his release as requested by the court,” he said.
According to Frigo, lack of implementation would constitute a fundamental disregard of Turkey’s obligations under the convention and as a member of the Council of Europe.
“The court thus concluded that the reasons put forward by the authorities for the applicant’s pre-trial detention had merely been a cover for an ulterior political purpose, which was a matter of indisputable gravity for democracy,” the chamber said, adding that there was no evidence in the charges for his detention that linked the offenses and his political actions.
When a chamber of the ECHR ruled that Demirtas’ right to a swift trial had been violated, Erdogan committed to making a counter-move against the ruling and an appeals court quickly approved a jail sentence against him over charges of disseminating terror propaganda in 2013 to finalize his conviction.
In several speeches he made recently, Erdogan still referred to Demirtas as “a terrorist having the blood on his hands.”
Since November 2016, Demirtas has been detained at a prison in Edirne, a city bordering Bulgaria and Greece, thousands of miles away from the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir where his family lives.
“Enough lives ruined. Enough pain inflicted. Enough injustice. Release Selahattin,” former European Parliament Turkey rapporteur, Kati Piri tweeted just after the announcement of the ruling.
Nacho Sanchez Amor, the current Turkey rapporteur of the European Parliament, said: “No more excuses for Turkey’s authorities: Respecting rule of law means freeing Demirtas.”
However, human rights lawyer, Erdal Dogan, was pessimistic about any positive move from the Turkish judiciary in that regard.
“I don’t expect any decision to release him. They already opened another trial against him for a second arrest for not being obliged to free Demirtas. However, this ECHR ruling is the utmost confirmation at the international scale that he is imprisoned over baseless charges,” he told Arab News.
In June, Turkey’s Constitutional Court concluded that the right to his personal liberty and security had been violated as his period of arrest exceeded the reasonable duration.
In detention, Demirtas has written three books containing short stories.