The hearing for a lawsuit filed against HDP Co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ for a speech she gave in Urfa’s Suruç district on July 20, 2015 took place at Urfa 5th Criminal Court today. Yüksekdağ is charged with “membership to a terrorist organization” and “terrorist propaganda”. She gave her statement through the video conferencing system SEGBİS from the Kandıra Type F Prison she is currently held in. HDP Antep MP Mahmut Toğrul attended the hearing as an observer.

“IF I’M PUT ON TRIAL, THEN SO SHOULD ERDOĞAN”

Yüksekdağ spoke after her lawyers Sevda Çelik Özbingöl and Dilara İnan and said:

“If a healthy alliance with Kurds had been built, the country and Syria wouldn’t be in this situation today. I still defend what I said at that time, and I believe they are right. Those who accuse me of supporting a terrorist organization will pay for this. At the time, the government was negotiating and making deals with YPG and PYD. The Tomb of Suleyman Shah was in danger of attack. We as the HDP intervened. PYD and YPG played a role in taking Tomb of Suleyman Shah and bringing it to Ashme. We called this the ‘Ashme Spirit’ at the time. How long has it been since? At that time they didn’t call PYD terrorists. There have been negotiations between the PYD and the government. The leader of the political power they call terrorist today, Salih Muslim was hosted in Istanbul. What is the speech I gave in the face of all these? (...) HDP achieved success in the June 7 elections. For that, they wanted to terrorize us. Will the prosecutor who prepared this indictment against me prepare the same for people who spoke a hundred times more than this ‘crime’? If I’m put on trial for this crime, then so should the Prime Minister of the day Davutoğlu, the undersecretaries, and the President. There is a contradiction for the government here. The most suitable verdict here is acquittal.”

The next hearing will be on March 16, 2017.

TOĞRUL: CLEARING THE PATH

HDP MP Mahmut Toğrul spoke in front of the courthouse and said that the AKP government, failing to defeat their rivals through political means, is attempting to pressure them through the judiciary, police and the military. Toğrul said: “These trials are not judicial, but political. We do not accept these practices. We consider these to be AKP’s practice of clearing the path on the way to the referendum.”