The wife of the jailed Kurdish leader has been sentenced to prison because of an error in a medical report on a miscarriage

Turkey sentences Kurdish politician's wife to prison for error in medical report

photo_camera REUTERS/HUSEYIN ALDEMIR - Basak Demirtas, wife of Selahattin Demirtas, the imprisoned former leader and presidential candidate of Turkey's main pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), comes to visit him regularly in Edirne prison.

Turkey has sentenced Başak Demirtaş, a teacher and wife of jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş, to 30 months in prison for fraud by "falsifying" a medical report related to a miscarriage Demirtas suffered in 2015.  

The case began in March 2018, after she was accused of submitting a medical report with the wrong date and being absent from work due to a miscarriage she suffered. 

Başak later took a leave of absence, albeit unpaid, to recuperate during the second half of the 2015-2016 school year.

However, the report was misdated by a difference of three days.

REUTERS/KEMAL ASLAN

As a result, a court in Diyarbakır handed down a two-and-a-half-year sentence to Başak Demirtaş and his doctor on Thursday, a Kurdish news agency reported.  

Nacho Sánchez Amor, the European Parliament's rapporteur on Turkey, reported on the social network Twitter that "The sentencing of [Demirtaş] to two and a half years in prison for a mere administrative error in relation to a medical record is appalling and seems beyond common sense. It seems so political. It gives the measure of the worrying state of the Turkish judiciary." 

Demirtas' lawyers, in a statement after the trial ruling, said the court that handed down the sentence did so without looking at the hospital's record book showing the dates he attended, which the Diyarbakır court board ruled should be presented as evidence.

AFP/ADEM ALTAN

"While the truth is self-evident, convicting Başak Demirtaş as a result of such a trial is blatantly illegal and manifestly unjust... It is the product of a collective punishment mentality," Demirtas' lawyers said. 

"Despite this situation, we will continue to wage our legal struggle. We still believe that the ruling will be overturned by the [appeals court] and justice will be done." 

Selahattin Demirtaş, husband of Başak Demirtaş and former leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was jailed after winning enough seats in the 2015 general election to wipe out the parliamentary majority of rival Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's party. 

Selahattin is charged with more than 100 counts, mostly terrorism-related, although he denies all the accusations against him.

REUTERS/MURAD SEZERE

Başak Demirtaş also reported in an interview last October that she and her two children had been prevented from visiting him in the high-security Edirne prison, which is more than 1,600 kilometres from their home.  

In addition, Başak was forced to resign from her job last year, citing the difficulty of teaching as a direct target of the pro-government media.   

Selahattin Demirtaş has become one of thousands of politicians, academics and civil servants charged and imprisoned in Turkey in recent years under Erdoğan's rule.  

Erdoğan's government accused the Peoples' Democratic Party, to which Selahattin Demirtaş belonged, of having links with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organisation in Turkey and other Western countries.

REUTERS/MURAD SEZERE

However, the HDP denies any links to the party. 

Last year, in December, the European Court of Human Rights demanded the immediate release of Selahattin Demirtaş on the grounds that his imprisonment had been a "merely covert decision for an ulterior political purpose, which was a matter of indisputable gravity for democracy". 

However, the court's claim was rejected.  

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