Turkish court orders pro-Kurdish member of parliament jailed on terrorism charge

A Turkish court has ordered the pre-trial jailing of a pro-Kurdish member of parliament, accusing her of being a member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant group.

Semra Guzel, a member of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was sentenced to jail on terrorism charges while awaiting trial late on Saturday, a day after she was arrested in the Turkish city of Istanbul, police and her lawyer said.  

The HDP denounced as “illegitimate and unethical” Guzel’s detention, after Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu announced her arrest.

"Our member of parliament being detained in an unethical way; the government making this into propaganda material using inappropriate and ugly language shows the ruling party's helplessness," the HDP said in a statement before the court ruling.

Guzel had her parliamentary immunity lifted in March after photos of her from several years ago with a militant from the PKK circulated on Turkish media. An arrest warrant was subsequently issued on a charge of membership of a terrorist organization.

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When the photos first surfaced in January, Guzel said the person was her fiancé and the photos were taken when she visited him during a peace process between Turkey and the PKK that broke down in 2015.

Guzel said the investigation against her, based on material found after the militant was killed in 2017, was not launched until she became a member of parliament a year later.

Guzel’s lawyer, Veysi Eski, rejected the charge against her as unfounded, calling it a continuation of what he said were "political genocide operations" against the HDP.

"A person visiting an acquaintance in the organization (PKK) camp does not in and of itself constitute the crime of membership of (a terrorist) organization," Eski told Reuters.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party and its nationalist allies frequently accuse the HDP of being the PKK's political wing. Thousands of HDP members have been tried in recent years over similar accusations. The party denies any links to terrorism.

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Militants of the PKK — designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union — regularly clash with Turkish forces in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of Turkey attached to northern Iraq.

A shaky ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish government collapsed in July 2015. Attacks on Turkish security forces have soared ever since.

More than 40,000 people have been killed during the three-decade conflict between Turkey and the autonomy-seeking militant group.

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