Opposition HDP criticizes top court over not ruling for release of party’s co-chairs

ANKARA

The Kurdish issue-focused Democratic Peoples’ Party (HDP) has slammed the Constitutional Court over its decision not to rule for the release of the party’s jailed co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ. 

HDP Şanlıurfa deputy Osman Baydemir said the top court was ruling inconsistently with its previous ruling regarding arrested lawmakers, referring to the earlier release of Mustafa Balbay and Mehmet Haberal. 

“After the Nov. 4, 2016 coup [the arrest of Demirtaş and Yüksekdağ], the Constitutional Court has not owned its rulings, which are inconsistent with the ruling on Balbay and Haberal,” Baydemir said during the HDP’s parliamentary group meeting on March 7.  

“Some of the signatory judges of the Balbay and Haberal decisions of the Constitutional Court are still in the delegation. They will also need law and justice one day. We won’t be unfair like them,” he also said. 

A total of 13 lawmakers from the HDP, plus Yüksekdağ, are currently under arrest, facing hundreds of years in jail for alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Baydemir said Demirtaş and Yüksekdağ are being kept in jail in order limit the campaign for a “no” vote ahead of the April 16 referendum on whether to shift the current parliamentary system to an executive presidency. 

The HDP deputy also addressed the issue of Turkish government officials’ recent description of Germany as “fascists” engaging in “Nazi era practices” after the decision to cancel Turkish ministers’ meetings in Germany. 

“If the total number of injustices, bans, banned events and unlawfulness’ is listed in Turkey, it would exceed the total height of all ministers in the cabinet,” Baydemir said.

Saying that Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are “walking in the same road,” he also suggested that “they are walking on roads that they have shed blood on.” 

“You didn’t get wet in the rain. You get wet in the blood you have shed,” Baydemir said.