Ft.com

One of Turkey’s most prominent political prisoners said the European Court of Human Rights had failed to prevent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from abusing the country’s courts, leaving him and thousands of others languishing in jail.

Selahattin Demirtas, the Kurdish former leader of the Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP), said that he and other high-profile detainees had been forced to wait years to have their cases heard by the ECHR even as international watchdogs have warned of a severe erosion of Turkish judicial independence and the rule of law.

“The European Court of Human Rights takes a long time to make decisions and, in the end, even if they rule that there has been a violation [of human rights], it doesn’t produce any practical results,” Demirtas wrote from his cell in Edirne prison near the Greek border, in a response to questions from the Financial Times.

While the politician stressed that only the Turkish people themselves could rescue their country from what he called its “bad state of affairs”, he said that the ECHR should provide “support” through its decisions to those fighting for change in the country.

The ECHR told the FT that some cases “still take too long” but said that Demirtas’s case had been granted priority status.

Demirtas, 47, led the HDP, a leftwing opposition party to a historic election result in 2015 that made it the first Kurdish grouping to enter Turkey’s parliament and caused Mr Erdogan’s ruling party to lose its parliamentary majority.

He was arrested the following year in the upheaval that followed a violent coup attempt and the collapse of a peace process between the state and the armed militant group the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK).

The Turkish government accuses Demirtas of supporting the PKK, which is deemed a terrorist group by Turkey, the US and the EU. Demirtas denies supporting terrorism and says his party has always backed a peaceful solution to Turkey’s decades-old Kurdish conflict.

The ECHR has issued two rulings on Demirtas’s case, in 2018 and 2019, both of which found violations of his rights. The first of those decisions said that his pre-trial detention, which spanned two “crucial” elections, “pursued the predominant ulterior purpose of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate” and ordered his immediate release.

But his lawyers said prosecutors have deliberately sought to circumvent the ECHR decisions and the politician remains behind bars. He was convicted in 2018 of making terrorist propaganda for a 2013 speech and is facing several other terrorism-related charges that carry a maximum sentence of 142 years in jail.

Both Demirtas and the Turkish government have appealed the 2018 ECHR decision on different grounds, and the Strasbourg court’s highest authority, the grand chamber, is expected to make a final ruling in the coming months.

Founded after the second world war with a mandate to enforce the commitments enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, the ECHR and its parent body, the Council of Europe, have struggled in recent years with underfunding, heavy caseloads and non-enforcement of its judgments by member states.

In Turkey, critics including prominent lawyers and civil society activists have accused the Council of Europe of failing to take a tough enough stance against Mr Erdogan’s human rights violations. They were enraged this month when the ECHR’s new president, Robert Spano, used a visit to Turkey to meet Mr Erdogan and senior judges but no opposition figures.

Mr Spano caused further controversy during a visit to the south-eastern city of Mardin, when he was accompanied by a government official who was installed as mayor after the elected HDP official was removed by the interior ministry — part of a broader crackdown against the party.

The ECHR said was it “standard practice” for court presidents to meet the political and judicial authorities of member states of the Council of Europe. Mr Spano had accepted the invitation to “convey a very important message” that those in power cannot control the courts and that judgments by the ECHR must be “respected and enforced”, it added.

Demirtas described the removal of dozens of HDP mayors as “totally illegal”, adding that it showed that Turkey no longer had even any “fragments of democracy” left.

After four years in prison, 1,200km from his family home, Demirtas — who was briefly hospitalised last year — said he was suffering from worsening health although his morale was “good”.

“I don’t think it’s right to constantly talk about the jail conditions and my own health, because there are thousands of others being held in prison in much worse conditions,” he said.