Other HDP parliament members were detained and released on probation, with Leyla Birlik released from prison on January 4 at her first trial hearing. All have since been indicted on terrorism charges. In the following months four more parliament members were jailed – Ayhan Bilgen, the party spokesman, Meral Danış Beştaş, a Parliamentary constitution commission member, Besime Konca, and Çağlar Demirel. Nihat Akdoğan, another member, was detained and jailed three days later. They were brought before courts and sent to pretrial detention the same day. Police detained Demirtaş and Yüksekdağ and the deputy chair of the party’s parliamentary group, İdris Baluken, on November 4, 2016, as well as six other parliament members – Nursel Aydoğan, Gülser Yıldırım, Leyla Birlik, Selma Irmak, Ferhat Encü, and Abdullah Zeydan. In the period before the immunity vote, there was a sharp increase in applications by prosecutors to investigate HDP members of parliament, with almost 152 applications in the month before the vote alone. The one-time removal of immunity has been criticized by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, which advises on constitutional matters, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. His vacant seat in the general assembly of Turkey’s parliament is shown here marked with his photo. Selahattin Demirtaş, former co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was among MPs jailed on November 4, 2016. The change does not apply to members investigated after the May vote was taken, who retain their immunity as long as they stay in office. The jailing of the parliament members is possible because of a temporary constitutional change, approved by parliament in May 2016, that lifted the parliamentary immunity of 154 members under investigation at that time for criminal offenses – 55 are HDP members. In Turkey’s southeast, the government has taken control of 82 municipalities won by the DBP and suspended their democratically elected co-mayors under suspicion of terrorism offenses, with 90 of them jailed pending trial. Yüksekdağ was stripped of her seat in February and subsequently of her party membership after an earlier terrorism propaganda conviction was upheld. Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, the co-leaders of HDP, and 11 of its other parliament members are in jail facing terrorism charges. “It’s deeply damaging to Turkey’s democracy that the government is locking up the leaders and MPs of an opposition party that received five million votes in the last election,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, “The fact that the curbs come during a vital national debate about the country’s future is doubly disturbing.” Both parties oppose such an expansion of presidential powers. The proposal has been widely criticized for lacking adequate checks and balances to protect human rights and rule of law against misuse of power by the office of the president. The move against the national pro-Kurdish party, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and its regional sister party, Democratic Regions Party (DBP), comes in the lead up to an Apconstitutional referendum on an amendment that would transform Turkey from its traditional parliamentary political system to a presidential one, leading to a concentration of power in the office of the president. Photographs of members of parliament from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) displayed in the general assembly of Turkey’s parliament after the MPs were detained and jailed in November 2016
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