Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the state violated the rights of Kurdish former MP Leyla Guven by refusing to release her after she was re-elected in 2018. 

The former co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), an umbrella organisation for a number of Kurdish political movements, was first detained in January 2018 after describing Turkey’s military intervention in northern Syria as “an invasion.”

She was re-elected as an MP for the opposition People’s Democratic Party (HDP) that June, but the prosecutor’s office in the Kurdish-majority south-eastern city of Diyarbakir issued a new arrest warrant for her.

Ms Guven was only released from prison in January 2019 after an 11-week hunger strike in protest at the treatment of jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan.

She was finally able to take her oath in parliament in July the same year, but in June 2020, Turkey’s parliament stripped her of her parliamentary status.

She was detained again and in December 2020, Ms Guven was sentenced to 22 years and three months behind bars on three trumped-up terrorism charges. 

The Constitutional Court ruled on Saturday that that “her right to personal freedom and security” had been violated regarding her detention in 2018. 

However, sources told the Morning Star that it is unlikely that Ms Guven will be freed despite the decision.

The HDP remains under threat of closure, while more than 100 of its leading figures face lengthy jail sentences in a mass trial. 

They are accused of responsibility for the deaths of 37 of the party’s own supporters who were killed by security forces and government-affiliated militia during protests in Diyarbakir in 2014 as Isis held the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane under siege.

At least 20,000 HDP supporters have been detained since 2016, with 10,000 of them jailed along with more than 200 elected officials. 

Since 2019, 48 of the HDP’s 65 elected mayors have been removed from office and replaced with government-appointed “trustees.”

In 2021 the Morning Star NUJ chapel awarded Ms Guven symbolic honorary membership and called for her immediate release.