Turkey’s beleaguered pro-Kurdish bloc was dealt a further blow Feb. 21 when the parliament stripped its imprisoned co-leader of her seat. An appeals court upheld Figen Yuksekdag's conviction of spreading terrorist propaganda.
Yuksekdag and fellow co-leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas remain in jail together with at least nine other HDP deputies — their numbers keep fluctuating — on a wide array of often sketchily constructed terror charges. Yuksekdag lost her seat because she attended the funeral of a left-wing militant deemed to be a terrorist.