Turkey: Ex-Kurdish party leader sentenced on terror charge

ANKARA, Turkey – A court in Istanbul has convicted a former co-chairman of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish political party of “engaging in terror propaganda.”

The court sentenced Selahattin Demirtas to more than four years in prison after finding him guilty on Friday.

The trial is one of several faced by Demirtas, who has been in pre-trial detention since November 2016.

He ran as the People’s Democratic Party candidate in Turkey’s presidential election from prison and garnered 8.4 per cent of the vote.

The court also convicted former legislator Sirri Sureyya Onder of the same charge and gave him a prison sentence of more than three years.

The two men were accused of supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in speeches they delivered in 2013 during festivities marking a Kurdish spring festival.

They denied the accusation and were expected to appeal.