The most charismatic politician to emerge in Turkey in a decade announced that he will be stepping down as co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), saying he will not seek re-election at the party congress scheduled for Feb. 11. Selahattin Demirtas, who has been held in jail for more than a year on a slew of alleged “terror” crimes, conveyed his resignation in a letter published by the party he has led since 2014.

Demirtas said he is stepping aside to enable the party to operate more effectively, which will remain a challenge with the government continuing its blanket repression of the opposition, in particular of pro-HDP Kurds. An HDP spokesman, Osman Baydemir, said around 10,000 HDP supporters, including scores of democratically elected mayors in the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, had been arrested since last summer’s failed coup.

In addition to Demirtas, 10 other HDP lawmakers remain in jail, including the party's former co-chair Figen Yuksekdag, all on charges of supporting “terrorism.” Today a court in Diyarbakir sentenced HDP lawmaker Idris Bayulken to 16 years and eight months in prison for “membership of a terrorist organization” and engaging in “terrorist propaganda.” Baluken has been languishing in an Ankara jail since February last year. Kati Piri, the European Parliament's rapporteur for Turkey, took to Twitter to condemn the move. “Devastating sentence and continuation of crackdown on opposition voices,” she tweeted.

Prosecutors are seeking up to 142 years imprisonment for Demirtas. They allege, among other things, that he is a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and that he incited people to violence during riots in the Kurds’ informal capital, Diyarbakir, in September 2014. The unrest erupted after the government refused to take action against Islamic State militants besieging the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani. Demirtas denies all the charges.