HDP’s Yüksekdağ not released at today’s hearing in Ankara

Arrested HDP Co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ:“The judiciary in Turkey has never been fully independent, but then again it has never been as dependent as now, never under so much pressure. It is very clear that there is a hand applying pressure on this case."

Arrested HDP Co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ's third hearing was held in the Ankara Sincan Prison Court Hall on Wednesday.

HDP Co-chair Serpil Kemalbay, DBP Co-chair Mehmet Aslan, SYKP Co-chair Tülay Hatimoğulları and many EMEP and HDP members are in the audience following the hearing.

Journalists without a yellow press card and foreign committees were not permitted into the hall. The international observers stood outside for hours during the course of the hearing.

The committees that wanted to monitor Yüksekdağ’s hearing are: Parti de Gauche, French Communist Party, Italian Progressives and Democrats Movement, Sweden’s Social Democratic Party, Norway’s Red Party Rødt, Norway’s Social Democratic Party, Greek SYRIZA, human rights activists and lawyers from the UK, German Social Democratic Party, European Parliament Left Group, Ireland’s Sinn Fein, Britain’s Labour Party, Britain’s General Union-GMB, Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance and Liberal Party representatives.
The panel of judges ruled for the continuation of Yüksekdağ’s imprisonment and adjourned the hearing to 20 February 2018.

Following the hearing, Yüksekdağ talked with the HDP deputies monitoring the hearing for 5 minutes. After the talk, she left the court hall making a victory sign.

A brief of Yüksekdağ’s speech at the third hearing of the main case that took place today in Ankara is as follows:

“The judiciary in Turkey has never been fully independent, but then again it has never been as dependent as now, never under so much pressure. It is very clear that there is a hand applying pressure on this case.

Representatives of international institutions and politicians are not being allowed into the court room because they are "foreign". This shows how much Turkey has isolated itself from the world, how much it has become alienated to human and judicial values. They are not the ones that are foreign, it is this place that is strange.

The legal justice system, the economic justice system and the political justice system in Turkey have come to such a point that the whole country has come to the brink of rot and collapse because of the irresponsibility of the ruling political power.

The coup in Turkey did not begin on July 15. July 15 was merely the outcome. The coup mechanism began to operate with interventions targeting the field of politics. The removal of our parliamentary immunity was the clearest sign of the transition into the coup phase.

We are not being tried by the panel of judges at court, but the AKP, the ruling political party. The ruling power did not feel the need to hide this, as for the judges, they see no harm in concealing it.

On June 7 [2015, general election], the people gave an ultimatum, saying, "It is time for change, we want a libertarian and fair political sphere". The response of the ruling political power to this ultimatum was to press the button for the annihilation of the platform of democratic politics.

The ruling political power has sorted out the media and all state institutions from head to toe, and HDP politicians are in prison, and it has formed its holy coalition. So what obstacle remains? The political situation, and the social and economic life in Turkey is much worse than it was a year ago. The inflation rate stands at 13%. Everyday, the Interior Minister announces a new death toll. How many more deaths will it take so that no one else dies in Turkey? When will this list end?

The discourse recently has been about the "survival of the state, the security of the nation..." Yes, Turkey is in fact facing a problem of survival, and the root cause of this problem of survival is the ruling party.

In this country, everything is done to put on trial journalists, academics, those who raise their voice for peace and democracy. You throw your weight around when it comes to us, but the ruling party is incapable of trying bribers and thieves, so they get tried in the United States.

Look at the content of the charges we face: That we criticized the death toll, the clashes... Turkey has now entered the top 5, alongside the most chaotic countries, in civilian deaths- but it is a crime to speak truth to the ruling power. But we have to show our concern.

I call upon this court: If you already have a decision, let us not continue this process -it is an insult both to me, and yourself. I am talking about a 7-year old child who was murdered, and about a woman whose lifeless body was exhibited naked in the streets. You, on the other hand, are the ones who define my act as the act of a terrorist organization.”