Politicians from Sweden not allowed to visit Selahattin Demirtaş in prison

Photo: MA 

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

The Edirne Type-F Prison in northwestern Turkey did not allow three politicians from Sweden to pay a visit to Selahattin Demirtaş, the former co-chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) who has been behind bars for nearly four years.

A delegation former by Left Party Chair Jonas Sjöstedt, Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Lotto Johnson Formarve and Left Party Foreign Relations Director H. Erik Metz Swernaling was accompanied by HDP deputy Zeynel Özen and Ramazan Demir, an attorney of Demirtaş.

Sjöstedt said in a statement near the prison that they came to Turkey to show internationalist solidarity against detentions and arrests of politicians, the Mesopotamia Agency (MA) reported.

The operations and repression against the HDP was a "dictatorial approach" and Turkey's authorities must immediately recognize the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decision about Demirtaş, he added.

The imprisonment of thousands of people was a reason for the poor relations between Turkey and EU, according to Sjöstedt.

He further said that the HDP and Demirtaş were "key to the solutions of the country's problems and that the main reason for Demirtaş's arrest was that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's "fear" of him.

After Edirne, they would travel to the capital Ankara and visit the HDP's headquarters, he added. (AS/VK)