HDP to announce presidential candidate on May 4

DİYARBAKIR

“We will announce the name of our presidential candidate on May 4,” co-chair of the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Sezai Temelli said on April 30.

“We have a pool of names. We have received suggestions for the presidential candidate. Talks carried out within and outside the party suggest that [former HDP co-chair] Selahattin Demirtaş has emerged as the frontrunning potential candidate,” Temelli said in a speech he delivered in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır.

Demirtaş has been held in Edirne Prison since November 2016 and is being tried in a series of other cases, facing decades in jail on charges including “leading a terrorist organization.”

On April 30, prosecutors demanded five-year jail sentences for Demirtaş and HDP Ankara deputy Sırrı Süreyya Önder on charges of “making terrorist propaganda.”