Türkiye appeals ECHR ruling on Demirtaş case

ANKARA

Türkiye has appealed a European Court of Human Rights ruling that found a violation in the arrest of former Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, asking for the case to be re-examined.

The appeal, filed on Oct. 7, comes a day before the deadline for challenging the July 8 ruling. The case will now be referred to the ECHR’s Grand Chamber for a final decision.

Demirtaş was sentenced in May to 42 years in prison in connection with a 2014 case on deadly protests that erupted in eastern Türkiye during the ISIL crisis in the Syrian town of Kobani, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic. His former co-chair, Figen Yüksekdağ, received a sentence of 30 years and three months.

A total of 108 defendants were tried in the case, with 12 acquitted. The charges included murder, looting, wounding public officials, desecrating the national flag and attempting to undermine state unity. Demirtaş has been in prison since November 2016.

The ECHR first ruled in 2018 that Demirtaş’s continued detention violated his rights, although it accepted that his initial arrest was based on reasonable suspicion. The court reaffirmed its decision in 2020, stating that Türkiye had failed to provide sufficient justification for keeping him behind bars.

In its latest ruling in July, the ECHR again concluded that Demirtaş’s arrest within the scope of the Kobani case was unlawful. The Turkish government’s appeal seeks to overturn that finding.

Tülay Hatimoğulları, co-chair of the HDP's successor Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), criticized the move on Oct. 7, saying the appeal amounted to "insisting on lawlessness and harming social peace and justice."