The Democratic Regions Party (DBP), the Free Women’s Movement (TJA) and the People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) organised a mass protest in Diyarbakır (Amed) against the recent verdict in the Kobane case.
DEM Party Co-chair Tülay Hatimoğulları and DBP Co-chairs Çiğdem Kılıçgün Uçar and Keskin Bayındır joined hundreds gathered in front of the DBP Provincial Organisation building. They chanted “Bijî berxwedana zindanan” (long live the prison resistance).
“We did not let ISIS pass during the Kobanê [the Kurdish-Syrian city of Kobani] resistance and we will not let them pass now,” Hatimoğulları stated.
The protesters were obstructed by the police, who tried to remove a banner which said, “ISIS lost, those who supported it will also lose.” However, the crowd ignored the attempts of the police and marched to İstasyon Street, the symbolic location where an ISIS attack took place on 5 June 2015.
As part of her statement, Hatimoğulları deemed the Kobane trial verdict a “legal massacre”. She stated the case was purely a political decision, not a legal decision, with the indictments written by Turkish President Erdoğan against the politicians from the country’s now obsolete pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), predecessor to the DEM Party.
“It is a case of taking revenge on the HDP, the oppressed, and the Kurdish people,” Hatimoğulları argued.
Separately, in Ankara, DEM Party MPs marched to the Ministry of Justice after making a statement in parliament about the Kobane case.
“Our Group Deputy Chairs Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit and Sezai Temelli and our MPs made a statement in the Turkish Grand National Assembly regarding the decisions made in the Kobani Conspiracy Case,” DEM Party said in a statement on X.
On 16 May, a court in Ankara reached a final decision in the eight-year Kobane Conspiracy Trial. Former HDP Co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ received 42 years and 32 years, nine months respectively.
Global media has been broadly critical of the sentence against the HDP co-leaders, along with their co-defendants in the trial. NGO Human Rights Watch called the charges against the politicians ‘bogus’, and ‘part of a campaign of political persecution’.
The conspiracy case arose from the events of 6-8 October 2014 when mass demonstrations erupted in southeast Turkey over the government’s supportive stance to the ISIS siege on the city of Kobani (Kobanê) in northern Syria. Tensions on the streets, and clashes with the police and fascist groups led to deaths. The majority of those killed were HDP supporters. However, the state, apparently motivated to destroy its political opponents, launched an overarching ‘conspiracy trial’ against HDP members.
