Alwaght- Turkey sentenced two Kurdish politicians to long-term prison terms over alleged links to a terrorist organization and disseminating terrorist propaganda.
According to Demiroren News Agency (DHA), former Member of Parliaments Gultan Kisanak, who was arrested in 2016 when she was the joint mayor of Diyarbakir city in southeast Turkey, was jailed for 14 years and three months, Reuters reported.
Sebahat Tuncel, who had also served in parliament, was jailed for 15 years, Reuters quoted DHA. She has been on hunger strike for three weeks and did not attend the court hearing.
Kisanak rejected the charges in court and said she had been held for two years before Friday’s sentencing.
“I do what I do because it is true, legal, legitimate, humanitarian. Everything I do is in the frame of democratic politics.”
Kisanak was arrested in October 2016 and accused of making speeches in support of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey since the 1980s. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the violence.
Turkey designated the PKK as a terrorist organization.
President Tayyip Erdogan has said the removal of elected officials and civil servants accused of links to the PKK is a vital part of the battle against it.
