TURKEY has stepped up its persecution of the Kurdish people as a court sentenced the co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to five months in jail late on Tuesday.

HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas was convicted of insulting the Turkish people and state institutions during a speech he delivered last year.

Mr Demirtas also faces terrorism charges for alleged links to the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and propaganda on their behalf.

Earlier authorities expelled the party’s other co-chair Figen Yuksekdag from parliament after she lost her appeal against a 2013 conviction for engaging in terrorist propaganda.

The two leaders were arrested along with 12 other HDP MPs in November after parliament voted to strip their immunity from prosecution. Prosecutors want to jail Mr Demirtas for 142 years and Ms Yuksekdag for 83.

The HDP’s executive said that the action against Ms Yuksekdag “once again tramples the constitution. “Following the lifting of our MPs’ parliamentary immunity, and the unconstitutional arrest of our MPs, the government has gone one step further… ignoring the will of the people.

“The Erdogan-AKP [Turkey’s president and ruling party] government is trying to overcome its own political deadlock as well as Turkey’s social and economic crisis,” it said.

The HDP predicted voters would reject April’s referendum on radically expanding the powers of the largely ceremonial presidency — and so the government was resorting to the “foul methods” of political repression.