Erdogan ally floats releasing jailed pro-Kurdish leader Demirtas

The surprise comment before reporters outside parliament came a year after Bahceli — a close ally of President Tayyip Erdogan who has in the past pushed him toward major policy shifts — urged the start of a peace process with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

PKK militants have since agreed to disarm and dissolve, opening a rare window for Turkey to address decades-long grievances among its large Kurdish minority, which has called for greater democratic rights and protections and helped fuel Demirtas’s surging popularity before his 2016 jailing.

Demirtas was detained in November 2016 on terrorism-related charges he denies. In May 2024, a court convicted him over the deadly 2014 protests and sentenced him to more than 40 years in prison; he also received a separate 2-year sentence in 2021 for insulting President Erdogan.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has twice ruled that Demirtas's rights were violated and called for his immediate release. Ankara's final appeal was rejected on Monday.

Demirtas welcomed a recent ECHR ruling on his case as "important and legally binding" and, in a handwritten post on X, urged unity: "This bond of brotherhood will be strengthened by the work we undertake to ensure freedom, justice and peace."

The pro-Kurdish DEM Party — known as HDP when Demirtas led it — remains parliament's third-largest bloc and in recent months has cooperated with a government-led peace commission, signalling readiness to support steps emerging from talks around the Imrali prison process.

Asked about the court's decision, Bahceli said: "The legal path has been completed. His release would be beneficial for Turkey."

Bahceli's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has historically been the fiercest opponent of broader Kurdish rights agendas and has long vilified Kurdish-rooted political groups — making Tuesday’s comment especially striking as Ankara edges toward potential reforms.

The pro-Kurdish movement has been targeted for years in a sweeping crackdown in which thousands of its officials and members have been jailed and many lawmakers and elected mayors removed from office.

(Reporting by Ezgi Erkoyun and Ece Toksabay; writing by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)