An Istanbul court has sentenced former HDP President Salahuddin Demirtaş to three years and six months in prison for “insulting” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for making testimony at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport after his return from Russia in 2015.
Demirtaş said on video while attending the court session on Monday: “Several abusive cases have been brought against me for criticizing the government’s foreign policy. Two separate charges were prepared for just some criticism against me. There is no point in going on the government, I wasn’t specifically targeting the President or the Prime Minister – directly “.
“I’m annoyed now that I didn’t say more then. It seems that what I said was very easy,” added Demirtaş. “It is the duty of a democratic society to criticize the government.”
Attorney Ramzan Demir said Demirta’s sentence was one of the harshest sentences ever imposed in the case of “insulting” Erdogan, as the judge ruled Demirtaş’s maximum sentence.
Basak Demirtaş, the wife of a prominent Kurdish politician, shared on Twitter her husband’s 2015 speech, for which he was convicted, as Demirtas criticized the Turkish government for ordering a Russian in his statement after his return from Russia Downing fighter aircraft, which created tension in relations between the two countries at the time.
In his speech at Ataturk Airport in 2015, Demirtaş said: “Let me just show an advantage for Turkey in the downing of the Russian plane and I will apologize, millions of people are suffering now.”
Basak Demirtaş said her husband gave his testimony after Turkish government newspapers described him as a “traitor” during his visit to Moscow.
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