Demirtaş sentenced to over 1 year in prison for insulting president

MERSİN

A court in the southern province of Mersin on Jan. 6 sentenced former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş to one year and five months in prison on charges of insulting the president.

The case concerned remarks Demirtaş made in 2015 during speeches in Mersin, the capital Ankara and the southeastern province of Diyarbakır and Mardin, with prosecutors alleging that they target President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Normally pursued as separate cases in each city, the lawsuits were consolidated and heard collectively in Mersin.

The court rejected Demirtaş’s lawyer’s request for a change of judge and delivered its verdict on Jan. 6, sentencing him to a year, five months and 15 days in prison.

The prosecutor had sought a sentence of up to seven years.

Demirtaş, who has been prisoned in the northwestern province of Edirne on another case, did not attend the hearing.

In 2024, Demirtaş was sentenced to 42 years in prison over his alleged role in the deadly 2014 protests triggered by ISIL’s incursion into the Syrian town of Kobani. He faces additional charges, including terrorism-related offenses linked to the PKK and further allegations of insulting the president.

Demirtaş has been imprisoned since November 2016. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) first ruled in 2018 that his continued imprisonment violated his rights.

In 2020, the court reaffirmed that Türkiye had failed to provide sufficient justification for keeping him in custody.

In its most recent ruling in July 2025, the ECHR again concluded that Demirtaş’s arrest in connection with the Kobani case was unlawful. The Turkish government has filed an appeal seeking to overturn that judgment.