The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on Tuesday ruled that Turkey had violated the rights of 13 former lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) by putting them in pretrial detention to stifle pluralism and to limit freedom of political debate, ordering the release of two of them who are still in jail.
Jailed Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas, a former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), has called on Turkey’s writers, artists, academics and journalists to unite and help establish full democracy in the country by taking “an active stance” for it in the period towards June 2023 elections, local media reported on Thursday, May 12.
