World’s first Yazidi MP on her way to Turkish parliament

DİYARBAKIR / RİZE

HÜRRİYET Photo

The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has nominated Feleknas Uca, a German-born politician and the world’s first Yazidi parliamentarian, as one of its leading candidates for the June 7 elections.

On April 7, the HDP nominated Uca as its fourth candidate from the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, one of the party’s strongholds. If the HDP manages to exceed the 10 percent national election threshold, Uca is expected to win a seat in parliament easily.

As a German Die Linke politician of Kurdish ancestry who was elected to the European Parliament in 1999, Uca was the world’s only Yazidi parliamentarian until the Iraqi legislature was elected in 2005. 

The 39-year-old politician has faced probes twice before in Turkey. In 2005, Turkish police launched an investigation into the Democratic People’s Party (DEHAP), where Uca spoke in Kurdish and called on Turkey to decrease the 10 percent election threshold, declare a general amnesty and suspend all military operations.

Uca was also detained at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport in 2012 for carrying a large number of B-1 vitamins that she reportedly planned to take to Kurdish hunger strikers in Turkish prisons.

Beaten retired teacher tops election list

Meanwhile, another highlight of the HDP’s candidate list was the nomination of a retired teacher who was beaten in the Black Sea province of Rize before the presidential elections in August 2015 due to his support of HDP’s candidate, Selahattin Demirtaş.

While Demirtaş, the HDP co-chair, has topped the party’s general elections candidate list in Istanbul, the retired teacher, Necmettin Durmuş, has been picked to lead the Rize province. 

Durmuş was lightly injured during an attack by three assailants, who damaged Demirtaş’s campaign stand on the street before being detained.