Pro-Kurdish lawmaker released from Turkish prison after five-day delay
Pro-Kurdish lawmaker Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu was finally released from prison Tuesday, five days after Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled his rights had been violated in his detention.
ISTANBUL — Pro-Kurdish lawmaker Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu was released from prison Tuesday. Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled on July 1 that his rights were violated in his detention on terrorism charges this spring. The decision cleared the way for his immediate release and the restoration of his parliamentary seat, but Gergerlioglu remained behind bars an additional five days following the ruling.
Gergerlioglu, an outspoken critic of human rights violations in Turkey and a member of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was stripped of his parliamentary status in March and jailed weeks later following a court decision to uphold a 2.5-year prison sentence for spreading terrorist propaganda in a 2016 social media post.
