HDP co-chairs Pervin Buldan and Sezai Temelli made a statement about the heavy prison sentences handed out to DBP co-chair Sebahat Tuncel and Amed Municipality co-mayor Gültan Kışanak.

Buldan and Temelli issued a written statement on the sentence handed out to the two women politicians.

"The trial of Tuncel and Kışanak, - write the HDP co-chairs - arrested by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in October 2016, is full of unlawfulness and irregularities. This decision is not legal but political.”

Temelli and Buldan said: The local court, proving that it was acting under the order of the ruling power, has in fact punished democratic politics with this sentence against Tuncel and Kışanak. This abnormality, called judgment, has been staged and concluded following a written script from the very beginning.”

The statement continued: “This sentence, issued on the eve of March 31st local elections, also includes a political decision. On 31 March, they will try to use this sentence to confirm the trustees and carry out the annihilation of the popular will. They have punished Gültan Kışanak for the services she provided as co-mayor of the Metropolitan Municipality of Diyarbakır. As for Sebahat Tuncel, she was punished for the activities she carried out within the Party of Democratic Regions, which have made important and universal developments in municipality.

In this respect, the decision is the continuation of the unlawfulness, which is called KCK operations that was initiated by the AKP immediately after the 2009 elections.”

‘We will grow, we will defeat this policy!’

This sentence, said the HDP co-chairs “is aimed at those struggling for democracy and showed that we are in the right, in our struggle. This biased mentality can punish us, our activities, the struggle for women's freedom and equality, but it can never prevent our struggle in the world.

As the ruling power continues with these punishments, we continue to grow as can be seen in the case of Selahattin Demirtaş, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Those who took these decisions today will be remembered with shame as the torturers of Kışanak in Diyarbakır dungeons and architects of the coup of 2 March 1994.”