Turkey sentences wife of jailed Kurdish politician over medical report

The wife of prominent jailed Kurdish opposition figure Selahattin Demirtas has been sentenced in Turkey to 2.5 years in jail after being found to have provided inaccurate information over a date in a medical report, her lawyers said.

Lawyers for Basak Demirtas, 44, said she was sentenced by a court over an incorrect date on a medical report issued by a doctor in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir in 2015, which she passed to her employer while taking sick leave.

Her husband Selahattin Demirtas, the former pro-Kurdish party leader and one of Turkey's best-known politicians, has been in jail for nearly five years on terrorism-related charges that he denies.

Selahattin Demirtas, who was co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was jailed on November 4, 2016 for alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). His trial over his links to the Kobane protests continues.

The European Parliament's Turkey rapporteur, Nacho Sanchez Amor, said her sentencing seemed "political".

Amor wrote on Twitter that "2.5 years of prison for a mere clerical error concerning a medical record is appalling and seems beyond common sense. It just looks so political. It gives the measure of the worrying state of Turkish judiciary."

The HDP said in a statement that the sentence given to the teacher is “a revengeful attack.”



PUKmedia