Court of Cassation Upholds Prison Sentence of Former HDP Deputy Co-Chair Tuğluk

Photo: bianet (archive)

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Court of Cassation 16th Penal Chamber has upheld the 10-year prison sentence of Aysel Tuğluk, the former deputy co-chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

The case was brought to the Court of Cassation after Ankara Regional Court of Justice rejected a request of appeal and upheld the verdict of the local court.

Tuğluk was arrested on December 29, 2016, when she was the deputy co-chair of the HDP, a joint Turkish-Kurdish party. Her statements to the press during the period when she was the co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) until September 2014 and the funerals she attended were shown as evidence in the indictment against her.

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On March 16, 2018, Ankara 17th Heavy Penal Court sentenced her to 8 years in prison. As per no. 3713 Anti-Terror Law, it increased the sentence by half, to 12 years. Then reducing the sentence by one-sixth, the court sentenced Tuğluk to 10 years in prison for "managing a terrorist organization."

She has been held at Kandıra Type-F Prison in the northwestern Kocaeli province.

About Aysel Tuğluk

Politician and lawyer. Tuğluk served two terms in the parliament. She is a member of the Human Rights Association (İHD) and a founding member of the Society and Legal Research Foundation (TOHAV) and the Patriotic Women's Association.

She served together with Kurdish politician Ahmet Türk as co-chairs at the Democratic Society Party (DTP), one of HDP's preceding political parties that was closed by the Constitutional Court in 2009. Ahmet Türk and Aysel Tuğluk were relieved of their MP duties.

She was elected an MP in the parliamentary elections in 2007 and 2011, from the provinces of Diyarbakır and Van respectively.

She was detained as part of an investigation into the PKK/KCK (Kurdistan Workers' Party/Kurdistan Communities Union) on December 26, 2016. Tuğluk was remanded in custody three days later for "managing an armed terror organization" and has been behind bars since then.

She was born in 1965 in the eastern Elazığ province. (TP/VK)