The Turkish judiciary has dismissed an indictment against Kurdish lawyer Aysel Tuğluk on suspicion of “membership in a terrorist organization”.

A criminal court in Amed ruled on Thursday that there was no reason for the trial against the former politician and member of parliament since she had already been sentenced to a long prison sentence for the same allegations in another trial. The public prosecutor's office has already announced that it will appeal against the dismissal of the lawsuit.

What the new indictment is about

The indictment drawn up by the Diyarbakır Higher Public Prosecutor's Office concerns allegations of terrorism in connection with Aysel Tuğluk's activities for the grassroots alliance “Democratic Society Congress” (DTK). Tuğluk led the organization, which is legal in Turkey but is treated by judicial authorities as a “PKK/KCK structure” and criminalized accordingly. Because of her role as co-chair, Tuğluk was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2018. The verdict was confirmed in 2020.

Charges filed after release from prison

The public prosecutor's office filed the now-dismissed charges against Tuğluk in November last year - just a few weeks after the 58-year-old's release from prison. The Kurdish lawyer, who was imprisoned at the end of 2016 and suffered from severe Alzheimer's dementia in prison, was declared “unfit to serve a sentence” and released in October 2022 on the basis of a report from the Institute for Forensic Medicine (ATK).

Around two weeks later, the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office submitted an application to the court to file a lawsuit. As an indication of Tuğluk's alleged membership in a terrorist organization, the authority referred to the statement of an alleged witness who was said to be a YPG fighter.

He was allegedly injured in Kobanê in 2014 and transported by Tuğluk across the Syrian-Turkish border to Cizîr (Cizre). The public prosecutor's office had demanded a prison sentence of up to fifteen years.