Ankara has used the pandemic as an excuse to dial up restrictions in Turkey’s prisons, she told journalist Fatih Portakal in an interview on his YouTube channel, where she criticized the government’s refusal to follow the ECHR’s ruling for the release of her husband.

The Turkish government jailed Demirtas, the former head of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), during a period of emergency rule in November 2016, accusing him of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group that has waged an armed struggle for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey since 1984.

The 47-year-old faces dozens of terror-related charges carrying combined sentences that could exceed 140 years. Demirtas’s arrest is part of a years-long crackdown on the HDP, which has seen dozens of elected mayors removed from office and thousands of members jailed.

"What is being done to Selahattin, is being done to everyone,’’ Basak Demirtas said. "There is virtually nobody left that has not been branded a terrorist among those criticize the government.’’

Basak Demirtas referred specifically to the case of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), Turkey’s leading medical group critical of the government’s pandemic response whose chair, Sebnem Korur Fincanci, Erdogan has gone on record to accuse of being a terrorist. The Turkish president has even labelled as terrorists the students at Bogazici students protesting the appointing of a government-linked rector, Basak Demirtas recalled.

The jailed Kurdish politician’s wife also blasted the government for its appeal of an ECHR ruling calling for her husband’s release. "If the ECHR ruling is not binding, then why have you appealed it?’’ she asked, referring to Turkey’s appeal of the ECHR first ruling on Demirtas in 2018.

The ECHR ruled again on Dec. 22 that Turkey must immediately release Demirtas, citing the government’s use of his four years in prison as a cover for limiting pluralism and debate in the country.

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