Turkey: Kurdish leaders face prosecution after end of peace process

Today’s Zaman reports: Following the end of the settlement process launched to resolve Turkey’s Kurdish issue, both co-chairs of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which was a partner in the peace process, have been charged with incitement to violence and promoting a terrorist organization.

If the prosecutor’s offices conducting the investigations decide that the two co-chairs broke the law, they will submit a demand to the Ministry of Justice to strip the parliamentary immunity of the co-chairs, who are also deputies in Parliament.

HDP Co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ could be brought to trial if Parliament votes to lift their immunity. Demirtaş could receive a sentence of up to 24 years in prison for inciting people to take to the streets in violent demonstrations before the protests triggered by the siege of the Islamic State and the Levant (ISIL) on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani in fall last year. [Continue reading…]

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