Turkey's top court rules Kurdish politician with dementia must stay in jail
Turkey's top court rules Kurdish politician with dementia must stay in jail
A court in Turkey on Friday ruled that a Kurdish politician with dementia, Aysel Tugluk, must remain behind bars.
1 min read
Aysel TuÄŸluk is a Kurdish politician from Turkey and was a founding member of the Democratic Society Party [source: Getty]
Constitutional Court on Friday decided to keep a politician with dementia in jail, the ruling said.
Aysel Tugluk, now 57, was the deputy co-chair of the pro- (HDP) before her arrest in 2016.
She was sentenced in 2018 to 10 years in prison for "belonging to a terrorist organisation".
The country's top court rejected a plea for her release, but ordered that she receive regular neurological and psychiatric treatment in hospital.
"The evolution of her illness must be followed and the need for a release evaluated at regular intervals," the court ruled.
Tugluk's lawyer Serdar Celebi on Saturday last week told AFP that merely providing was not enough, and her illness was only worsening in detention.
Her supporters believe she developed dementia after witnessing Turkish nationalists attack her mother's funeral in Ankara in 2017. She had been authorised to attend.
Tugluk was arrested for her activities with the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), an organisation that Turkish authorities consider to be linked to the (PKK), which Ankara and its Western allies have blacklisted as a "terrorist" organisation.
Ìý
