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Aysel Tuğluk, imprisoned former founding co-chair of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) was briefly hospitalised on Friday, Mezopotamya Agency reported citing HDP’s Figen Yüksekdağ.
Tuğluk was then returned to the Kocaeli Prison, where she is serving a 10 year sentence over her speeches at various events, after receiving medication and treatment.
“The negative situation caused by prison conditions further harms her health,” said Yüksekdağ, a former co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party, (HDP) who is currently in pre-trial detention in the same prison as Tuğluk.
Fifty seven year old Tuğluk was diagnosed with dementia in February 2021 while behind bars. Her health has been deteriorating as her condition advances and she is less able to take care of her daily self care needs.
According to Yüksekdağ, Tuğluk had not recovered yet from a recent bout of COVID-19.
The Constitutional Court in August rejected the release application for Tuğluk, a lifelong activist, human rights lawyer and former MP, despite a report by the Forensic Medicine Institute that acknowledged that her condition was likely to decline and that the dementia would advance in prison conditions.
Tuğluk was arrested in December 2016, days after the arrest of Yüksekdağ, Yüksekdağ’s co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, and several other HDP MPs. The veteran politicians are facing charges of terrorism, and are currently on trial for alleged second degree murder and incitement to violence over the 2014 protests against an ISIS siege of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane.
