A request for release from prison by the defence team of the former co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtaş, due to the risk of infection with the coronavirus has been rejected by the 5th Division of Ankara Criminal Court of Peace without giving reasons.

"A completely arbitrary decision without any legal basis, for which the court needed two weeks", criticized Mahsuni Karaman, one of the lawyers of Demirtaş.

The lawyers of Demirtaş, who is himself a lawyer, had argued in the motion that the life of the 46-year-old politician was in danger because of insufficient protective measures in prisons against the pandemic. Demirtaş suffers from pulmonary hypertension and sleep apnoea syndrome. He thus belongs to a risk group for the novel lung disease Covid-19. According to authorities, more than two-thirds of corona death victims in Turkey are hypertension or pulmonary hypertension patients.

Selahattin Demirtaş was imprisoned along with numerous other politicians of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the course of the political campaign of annihilation against the Kurdish opposition in Turkey in November 2016 and has since been held in the Edirne high-security prison in western Turkey. At the end of November he suffered a fainting spell in his cell and lost consciousness. First aid measures were carried out at the time by his cell mate Abdullah Zeydan, who was awakened by the politician's fall and informed the prison staff. Despite a doctor's recommendation, Demirtaş was not transferred to hospital for seven days.

Figen Yüksekdağ also remains in jail

In early April, another court in Ankara also rejected a request for the release of former HDP co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ. Her lawyers had also argued that there was no way for the politician to protect herself from the pandemic in prison, saying that this would violate her right to life. They recalled that, moreover, Figen Yüksekdağ had been in prison for almost three and a half years solely because of her legal political activities. The court justified its refusal to release her from prison on the grounds that there was no concrete evidence of the violation of the right to life, as it had not been proven whether the viral disease had spread in the prison.