Kurdish leader sentenced for insulting Erdogan
Kurdish left-wing politician Selahattin Demirtaş was sentenced to three years and six months in prison by a Turkish court for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Demirtas, a leader and co-founder of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was given the maximum punishment for the offence. He has been imprisoned since November 2016 along with several other HDP leaders. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled twice in favor of Demirtas’ immediate release, concluding that his continued pre-trial detention has an “ulterior purpose of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate, which is at the very core of the concept of a democratic society.” (Photo: Demirtaş’ presidential campaign launched outside Edirne prison where he is incarcerated, May 2018, via Wikipedia)