Even Erdoğan backs the release of Turkey’s brightest opposition leader. So why is he still in jail? | Kaya Genç
The Guardian · · g316541
Selahattin Demirtaş lit up the Turkish left in 2014, but was imprisoned for ‘terrorist propaganda’. His freedom would mark a new political era A decade and a half ago, a promising figure emerged on Turkey’s political scene: Selahattin Demirtaş. A tall, talented, human rights lawyer then still in his 30s, a founder of Amnesty’s Diyarbakır branch in eastern Turkey , he was adept at thinking on his feet. And could he talk. His witty satirical speeches , broadcast on the evening news, annoyed Turkey’s establishment politicians on the right and left alike. Demirtaş’s meteoric rise began in 2010, when he became the chair of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party, the Peace and Democracy party (BDP). I voted for Demirtaş in the 2014 presidential election , when he was 41. Despite his loss to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Demirtaş’s 9.7% vote share cheered up leftists such as me on what promised to be another sad election night. I voted for Demirtaş’s party again (since renamed the Peoples’ Democratic party, HDP) in the 2015 elections . That was a night to remember. Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP), which had governed since 2002, lost its parliamentary majority for the first time. Demirtaş and the HDP garnered 13.1% of the vote, a stunning result for an eco-socialist, feminist, pro-Kurdish movement. There was jubilation and partying in Cihangir, Istanbul’s bohemian heart. I celebrated into the wee hours alongside friends, convinced we would wake up to a new Turkey. Kaya Genç is a novelist and essayist from Istanbul, and the author of The Lion and the Nightingale: A Journey Through Modern Turkey Continue reading...