This article originally appeared in Ahval.
A Turkish court sentenced the former pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy and Central Executive Board member of the country’s leftist Labor Party (EMEP) Levent Tüzel to one year and three months in jail for his participation in Nevruz celebrations, independent news site Diken reported.
Tüzel was on trial for opposing the ”Law on Demonstrations and Public Meetings,’’ during a Kurdish new year festival in 2012, the site said.
The EMEP headquarters responded to Tüzel’s jail sentence with the following statement:
“This decision is a clear violation of the right to conducting politics, freedom of thought and expression while diverging from the decisions of Turkey’s Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). We will continue our legal and political struggle against this decision.’’
The Turkish government revoked Tüzel’s passport following the July 2016 coup attempt as part of a crackdown on opposition voices.
The EMEP board member is on record for ejecting an invitation to participate in an interim election government in 2015, set up by then Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.
This article was originally published in Ahval.
