Selahattin Demirtaş: “Why am I in jail?”

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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 KCK1The Union of Kur­dis­tan Com­mu­ni­ties. The orga­ni­za­tion head­ing the Kur­dish lib­er­a­tion move­ments in the four parts of Kur­dis­tan.to 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.2The Broth­er­hood refers to Fetul­lah Gülen’s orga­ni­za­tion, Erdo­gan’s for­mer ally, now con­sid­ered an ene­my of the Turk­ish State.

 

5- Sec­ond allegation:the PKK,3Kur­dis­tan Work­ers Par­tywould 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,4Plat­form of Kur­dish asso­ci­a­tions and move­ments in Turkey.the 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,5Demo­c­ra­t­ic Soci­ety Par­ty, found­ed in 2005, pro­hib­it­ed and shut down in 2011.in 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 6–8.6Events that led to 40 deaths in Kobanê.

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 Karayılan7Pres­i­dent of the the Kur­dis­tan Con­fed­er­a­tion’s exec­u­tive coun­cil.were 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.

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Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
iknowiknowiknowblog.wordpress.com

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