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A series of messages from Selahattin Demirtaş, ex-Copresident and deputy of the HDP, who has now been in jail for close to three years.
Once HDP deputies’ parliamentary immunity was lifted, he was incarcerated, along with others on November 4 2016.
You will find this series of tweets on Selahattin Demirtaş account, @hdpdemirtas
1- Hello, I hope you are all well. We are fine also. I would like to provide a bit of information about my trial. For obvious reasons, an important segment of the media are not following my hearings. But everyone is entitled to the truth.
2- I may take up a bit of your time, but the entirety of what I will tell you is truthful and important.I know you are not among those who believe the ones going from one station to another and declaring I am “a terrorist assassin”. Still, please listen to all the “allegations” from my own mouth.
3. First allegation: According to the so-called declaration by a secret witness going by the name of Mercek and filed in 2009, I had received orders from the KCK1to make a speech in Kurdish at the National Assembly. Please note that the speech in Kurdish was made by Mr Ahmet Türk.
4- Two years after my arrest on the basis of this accusation, the main office of the Republic’s Prosecutor in Diyarbakir, specified in a document, sent at the insistence of the tribunal, that this secret witness did not exist. And prosecutor Uğur Özcan who had prepared and sent this document in the inquest to the National Assembly was later arrested for his links with the Brotherhood.2
5- Second allegation:the PKK,3would supposedly have written a letter to a family in Elzig and asked Mrs Gültan Kışanak and myself to hand deliver the letter. Said letter was allegedly found in the computer of Mr Abdullah Demirbaş, ex- Mayor of Sur, Diyarbakir neighborhood and Ali Oruç, a member of the Party’s Council, would have turned it over to us. In the year 2009.
6- Years later, technical analysis demonstrated that this letter had been retrieved illegally from Abdullah Demirbaş’ computer. Ali Oruç, Abdullah Demirbaş and Gültan Kışanak were acquitted. But the letter was added to my file and used as a motive for my arrest.
7- The family suspected with receiving this letter, also declared such a letter did not exist. Moreover, the prosecutor who prepared the inquest was also Uğur Özcan who was arrested as a member of the Brotherhood.
8- Third allegation: In 2008 when I was Vice-President of the group [of HDP members of Parliament], I was alleged to have spoken with leaders of the KCK. My phone had thus been tapped illegally during my tenure as deputy. No evidence of a crime was found in the contents of my communications, but the persons with whom I spoke were allegedly leaders of an [illegal] organization.
9- Who then were these “organisation leaders” whose identity was not revealed – on purpose – in the inquest? The one labelling all leaders of our Party [HDP] as members of an [illegal] organization and building the file for the inquest is, once again, this same Prosecutor arrested for belonging to the Brotherhood, Uğur Özcan.
10- Fourth allegation: I participated in conferences and round tables of the DTK,4the well-known Congress for a Democratic Society. The content of these meetings did not contain any criminal purpose, but the DTK is allegedly a “terrorist structure” of which I am a leader.
10- The DTK is a legitimate, open and legal platform, presently pursuing its activities and even invited to the National Assembly by its President in order to provide input on studies conducted around the Constitution.
12- In this same spirit, following this invitation, the DTK had presented its written proposals and advice to the Commission on Reconciliation in the constitution.
13- We participated in some of these meetings, targeted by the accusation, together with – this is ironic – Galip Ensarioğlu and Yasin Aktay, both deputies for the AKP. All these meetings were legal and covered by the media.
14- Fifth allegation: A person by the name of Faik Hoca [Master Faik], one of the leaders of the KCK, allegedly transmitted an order for my participation in a conference, Kamuran Yüksek serving as intermediary.
15- Yet, Kamuran Yüksek was then our Vice-President [of the HDP]. The one so-called leader of the KCK they call “Faik Hoca” is the European representative of our Party, Faik Yağızay. As he is a professor of mathematics, in the party we nicknamed him “Faik Hoca”.
16- The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also knows Faik Hoca. They met at the European Council. These false accusations can be found in Inquest File N° 1. The Prosecutor who established this file is again Uğur Özcan, since arrested for belonging to the Brotherhood.
17- Sixth allegation: In 2009, when I was Vice-President of the HDP group [in Parliament], I would have requested the KCK’s authorization to participate in a trip abroad with the President of the Republic. The person with whom I spoke was none other than Kamuran Yüksek, the Vice-President of the Party. He was responsible for relations between the Party’s main bureau and the Party’s parliamentary group.
18- In other words, I had informed headquarters of my Party about the invitation. Moreover this phone communication was tapped illegally. The prosecutor responsible for this part of the inquest was also arrested for belonging to the Brotherhood…
19- Seventh allegation: I am allegedly one of the people responsible for the KCK ‘s political domain in Turkey, and according to a “seized” list, I would stand in the 21st position. In fact, said list is that of the participants in the “Conference of Local Administrations”, co-organized by the DTK and the DTP,5in a conference room of Diyarbakır’s City Hall.
20- I participated in this conference as Vice-President of the group, and was one of the speakers. I was in 21st position in the list of speakers.
21- Eighth allegation: tweets, devoid of violence, published for HDP headquarters concerning events on October 6–8.6
22- Despite every inquiry since then, not a single appeal of mine has been found. Finding such would be impossible. Quite the contrary, my two appeals denouncing violence and calling for their cessation, are already part of the file.
23- However, finding no evidence, messages published on a phony account in the name of Murat Karayılan7were added to the file. In order for the hours of publication to match, the hours on the HDP tweets were falsified.
24- All other accusations are based on my speeches that were open to the press. In fact, you can still listen to most of them on social media. All those speeches were made in the framework of freedom of expression.
25- Moreover, I also expressed these thoughts at the National Assembly. For this reason, opening a trial, and arresting someone, or even conducting an inquest cannot be done. For Article 83/1 of the Constitution reads as follows:
“Members of Turkey’s Grand National Assembly cannot be held responsible of the votes they record or the words they pronounce in sessions of the Assembly, or of opinions they profess at the Assembly, or of their repetition or broadcasting outside the Assembly, unless the Assembly has decided otherwise during a session conducted following a proposal by the Presidential Bureau.”
26- These are the entirety of the accusations against me for “having established an [illegal] organization and for being one of its leaders. Listen to Şamil Tayyar, the prosecutor who prepared my indictment after raiding my home in the middle of the night with masked policement and who, before my children, had me stand at attention and then incarcerated: (vidéo in Turkish)
27- We brought up all these plots and frame-ups before the Constitutional Court. It is to be deplored that this Constitutional Court should have refused the request for a hearing without taking the trouble to study these false pieces of evidence. We went to the European Tribunal of Human Rights. The European Tribunal ruled that my trial and my incarceration were political. And this decision was greeted with “it does not bind us, we do not recognize it.”
28- My deputy comrades and I have been held in prison cells for close to three years, on the basis of these kinds of allegations. We are convinced we will meet justice some day. I say this, not as a statement of confidence in politicized justice, but as a statement of confidence in our people.
29- Everything outside what I am expressing here is a slanderous lie. We have made great sacrifices in the name of peace and of living together, and this has been the price. But we are not intimidated, nor desperate. We continue to resist. Until peace and democracy triumph.
30- We send our warmest greetings to all of you. We hope the resons of our incarceration as political hostages are better understood.