Hopes rise for Kurdish politician Demirtaş’s release

Hopes are rising that jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş could be freed this week as Turkey approaches a European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) deadline to challenge a ruling that his imprisonment is unlawful.

Demirtaş, the former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), has been held in Edirne Prison since November 2016.

He was first jailed on terrorism-related charges, seen widely as politically motivated, and re-arrested in 2019 after briefly being released, despite earlier ECtHR rulings.

The ECtHR in July issued its third decision finding violations in Demirtaş’s case, ruling that his 2019 re-arrest lacked legal basis and was politically motivated.

A high criminal court in Ankara, however, rejected the ECtHR’s latest request for his release, citing the fact that the ECtHR’s July 8 ruling had not yet become final.

In its latest decision, the ECtHR ruled that Turkey once again violated Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to liberty and security, and criticized Turkey’s Constitutional Court for taking nearly four years to process Demirtaş’s individual appeal. It was the third ECtHR decision condemning Turkey’s handling of Demirtaş’s detention.

Turkey has until October 8 to appeal. If it does not, the decision becomes final, a step that could open the door to his release after nearly nine years behind bars.

His lawyer, Mahsuni Karaman, said on X that October 8 would serve as a “litmus test” for Ankara’s commitment to “brotherhood” in line with the name of a parliamentary body established to advance a peace process with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party: the National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Commission.

He said Demirtaş, former HDP co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ, who was also arrested in 2016, and all the other Kurdish political prisoners should be released from prison.

However, there are concerns that even if the ECtHR judgment becomes final, domestic courts may still resist implementing it, as has happened with past ECtHR rulings.

The Diyarbakır Bar Association, meanwhile, has renewed its call for Demirtaş’s immediate release, stressing that ECtHR rulings are binding under Turkey’s constitution. “Selahattin Demirtaş must be released unconditionally,” the bar said in a statement on Monday, warning that his continued detention weakens judicial independence and democratic rights in the country.

The ECtHR’s 2020 decision on Demirtaş’s detention in connection with the 2014 Kobani protests is still under review by the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Committee of Ministers, after Turkish courts refused to release him.

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.

Demirtaş was almost immediately re-arrested on reclassified charges involving the same events in 2019 despite his release based on a ECtHR ruling.

The CoE Committee of Ministers in September recalled 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 the Turkish government to take concrete steps to strengthen freedom of expression and political participation.

In a statement on Friday, Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), which succeded the HDP, also called on the government to immediately release Demirtaş and Yüksekdağ along with others jailed in the high-profile Kobani case, citing binding rulings by the ECtHR and the CoE Committee of Ministers.

Feti Yıldız, deputy chairman of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ally of  President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, recently acknowledged that Turkey is obliged to follow ECtHR rulings under Article 90 of the constitution, which gives international treaties precedence over domestic law.

Demirtaş, who lost his parliamentary immunity in 2016, remains one of Erdoğan’s most prominent political rivals.

There are fears that the peace process aimed at ending the decades-long armed conflict with the PKK is being used for political theater without addressing the core issues of justice and political inclusion.

The fact that well-known Kurdish politicians such as Demirtaş and Yüksekdağ are being held in prison at a time when the government conducts peace talks with the PKK raises suspicions about the government’s motives.

The renewed peace process was initiated in October 2024 by MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli. 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.