If Demirtas is not released, he will have to serve the remainder of his sentence until January 3, 2023, Deutsche Welle Turkish reported on Friday.

The Committee of Ministers has called for the immediate release of Demirtas, as per the 2018 and 2020 rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), as has the European Parliament. In the committee’s meeting in Strasbourg between Sept. 14 and 16, the lawmakers demanded an action plan from Ankara before Sept. 30.

Demirtas, the former co-chair of the left-wing pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was arrested alongside his co-chair Figen Yuksekdag and several former HDP deputies on Nov. 4, 2016 over alleged ties to groups designated terrorist in Turkey.

The years-long detention of the popular politician was a cover for limiting pluralism and political debate in the country, the ECHR said as it called for his immediate release.

An Ankara court convicted Demirtas to two years and six months in prison in May this year for making threatening statements against a prosecutor. In March, he was convicted of charges of insulting the president. In April, the Court of Cassation approved a four year and eight months sentence for Demirtas over charges of terrorist propaganda.

Turkey has “taken no steps whatsoever to comply with the ruling” despite the ECHR ruling being finalized last year, Demirtas's lawyers said in a statement on Friday.

Turkey maintains that the ECHR rulings only pertain to the time Demirtas spent behind bars on remand, and that the ruling has already been complied with, since another court had ordered Demirtas's arrest for the second time while he was still in prison on Sept. 20, 2019.

The September 2019 arrest is related to the so-called Kobani case, where 108 HDP politicians are facing trial for allegedly inciting widespread street protests known as the Kobani events, which resulted in the death of more than 30 people between Oct. 6 and 8 in 2014.

“As it is known, the ECHR Grand Chamber has ruled that this arrest must be voided at once,” Demirtas's lawyers said.

“We are following with sorrow that in the action plan the government has given manipulative information to the Committee of Ministers and openly stated that the ECHR ruling would not be complied with,” they said.

The government’s action plan is “an informative note” to let the Committee of Ministers know when Demirtas would be eligible for parole regarding the finalized prison sentence, and when that sentence would end, according to the lawyers.

“As such, the government’s ‘action plan’ does not pertain to the Committee of Ministers’ call for ‘individual and general measures’ on the matter,” they added.

The committee will discuss the matter once again in an ambassadors’ meeting in Strasbourg between Nov. 30 and Dec. 2. November 30 is also the deadline the committee has given to Turkey to release Turkish philanthropist Osman Kavala from pre-trial detention.

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