The Kurdish-led Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) have called on political parties and rights organisations in Turkey to take a stance in support of democracy before the final court session of the Kobane case next week.
The verdict will be announced on 17 April in the lawsuit known publicly as “the Kobane trial”. There are 108 Kurdish politicians, among them Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, both former co-chairs of the DEM Party’s predecessor, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), who are accused of instigating the violence that led to multiple deaths in 2014 by making a call for mass demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Syria’s Kurdish town of Kobane, which was besieged and under attack by the Islamic State (ISIS) group at the time.
Both the prosecution and the government media have never acknowledged that the violent incidents did not start with the first wave of demonstrations, but only after Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister at the time, said in a public address that “Kobane is about to fall”.
Most of the 48 civilians that fell victim to the violence were supporters of the HDP.
The lawsuit was only launched six years later, in 2020, and a call for demonstrations tweeted by the HDP was picked up by the prosecution to argue that the deadly violence was triggered by the HDP.
The verdict in the case may lead to long prison sentences and years of political bans on prominent Kurdish politicians, and even to the HDP’s closure. This possibility was the very reason why the party ran in the last parliamentary elections under the sister Green Left Party and why it was later renamed to the DEM Party.
Reaction to the case
Stressing that the European Court of Human Rights earlier concluded that the content of the tweeted call in question was political and could not be assessed as a call instigating violence, the DEM Party in its statement said:
“We have many times in the past stood against lawless schemes and have not let them succeed. Similarly, we will not let this plot achieve its aim either. We call on political parties and rights organisations to stand by democratic politics in order to foil the plot of the ruling coalition.”
The HDP has previously argued that the trial is a political manoeuvre by the Turkish government to target the Kurdish population, their political institutions and their representatives. “This conspiracy is aimed at suppressing the Kurds. You are defending the barbarity of ISIS. We are being tried for standing with the people of Kobane,” said defendant and former HDP co-chair Sebahat Tuncel at the 53rd hearing.
Similarly, a coalition of 193 intellectuals and artists issued a joint statement in August 2023, expressing grave concerns over the Kobane trial. “As people of art and ideas, we are against this blatant unlawfulness,” they stated.
The background
The HDP party members stand accused of initiating the events that took place on 6-7 October 2014 in Turkey’s largest cities and those heavily populated by Kurds.
On 20 May 2016, the Turkish National Assembly lifted the parliamentary immunities of the HDP MPs. They were arrested in dawn raids on their homes on 4 November of the same year.
During this process, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued its initial violation ruling in November 2018, demanding Selahattin Demirtaş’s release. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s reacted to the ECHR ruling, saying, “It does not bind us. We will take countermeasures and resolve the matter.”
In the indictment, the prosecutor seeks aggravated life imprisonment 38 times for the defendants on 29 different charges, including “murder”, “looting”, “injuring a public official with a gun”, “burning flags”, and “disruption of the national unity and the integrity of the country”.
