The retrial of Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş for "revealing the identity of persons involved in counter-terrorism" started at a criminal court in Ankara on Friday. The prosecution is demanding up to eight years in prison for the former co-chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

The subject of the case is an alleged threat against Yüksel Kocaman, former chief prosecutor in the Turkish capital and now a prosecutor at the Court of Cassation. He is considered a loyal follower of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; they met in prison in 1999. Kocaman was the prosecutor in charge of the penitentiary, and Erdoğan was in pre-trial detention because of a poem inciting the people. Kocaman is also considered the prosecutor who prevented Demirtaş's release despite the ECtHR ruling.

In May 2021, the 25th Ankara Heavy Penal Court sentenced Demirtaş to two and a half years in prison for a statement he made about Kocaman's wedding. "There was a time when prosecutors were even given armoured vehicles. Yet they did not manage to escape justice. The gift bags someone puts in your hands will also not save you from prosecution," Demirtaş commented on the celebration among other things in another pending case against him. The 2020 wedding at the Sheraton Hotel in Ankara was attended by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the chairman of the Court of Cassation, the ministers of the interior and justice, the chief of general staff and the chairman of the election commission.

Last April, the verdict against Demirtaş was overturned by a regional court of appeal and the case was referred back to the 25th Ankara Heavy Penal Court for a retrial on the grounds that the sentence had been too low. In addition, Demirtaş's statement was claimed to have made Kocaman a target of "supporters of terrorist organisations" as a "person in a counter-terrorism office" and thus violated the Counter-Terrorism Law No. 3713 Art. 6/1. The article regulates the "prohibition of revealing the identity of persons engaged in counter-terrorism or other persons who could thus become targets of violent acts, as well as announcing that violent acts could be committed against certain identifiable persons by terrorists." It is not necessary that an attack actually occurs against the persons mentioned.

In the opinion of the Court of Appeal, the first trial against Demirtaş had reduced the charges and the sentence had thus been too low. The prosecution demanded up to eight years imprisonment for Demirtaş in that trial, as does the prosecution in the new trial. At today's kick-off, the 49-year-old politician’s lawyers filed a motion for an extension of time for the defence, which was rejected by the court. The trial will continue on 16 September.

Selahattin Demirtaş has been in prison for over five years. The then HDP co-chair was arrested in November 2016 along with nine other HDP MPs, including former co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ. Despite a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), he is not being released. In the main trial, the prosecution accuses him, among other things, of founding and leading a terrorist organisation, spreading terrorist propaganda and inciting the people. The indictment builds on 31 investigation reports submitted to the Turkish parliament during his time as an MP for the removal of immunity. If convicted, Demirtaş faces up to 142 years in prison. In the trial concerning the October 2014 protests against Turkish support for the jihadist militia ISIS in the attack on the town of Kobanê in Rojava, Demirtaş is even facing up to 15,000 utopian years in prison. The Kurdish politician has already been sentenced to various prison terms in several trials, including for insulting the president.