ANKARA - DEM Party has selected Oztürk Türkdoğan and prisoner politician Gültan Kışanak as co-mayor candidates for Ankara Metropolitan Municipality. In her candidacy message, Kışanak said: "We are setting out to build social and peace bridges from Diyarbakır to Ankara, and from Ankara to all over Turkey."

 

Announcing the municipality co-mayor candidates to be shown in 14 cities, the names chosen by the DEM Party for Ankara are Oztürk Türkdoğan, who was previously the Co-President of the Human Rights Association (İHD), and the prisoner Kurd politician Gültan Kışanak.

 

Former Amed Metropolitan Municipality co-chair Gültan Kışanak, who has been held in Kandıra Prison for 7.5 years, sent a message through her lawyers regarding her nomination as a candidate.

 

Kışanak's message is as follows: "Dear People, I would like to state that I accept our Party's candidacy proposal for Ankara Metropolitan Municipality Co-Mayor as a requirement of my responsibility to you. It was necessary to discuss our issues, especially the Kurdish issue and the women's freedom issue, at their source, in Ankara. We are setting out to build social peace bridges from Diyarbakır to Ankara, and from Ankara to all over Turkey. I invite you, everyone who believes in peace, democracy and freedom, to take the initiative in this struggle, and I wish you success in advance."

 

SHE IS NOT RELEASED EVEN THOUGH SHE COMPLETED HER SENTENCE 

 

The cases filed in Malatya and Ankara against Gültan Kışanak, who was detained on October 25, 2016 and arrested on October 31, two years after she was elected as Amed Metropolitan Municipality Co-Mayor in 2014, on the charges of "being a member of a terrorist organization" and "making propaganda for a terrorist organization" have been consolidated.

 

While the cases were ongoing, Kışanak's long imprisonment period, which was regulated as 5 years in the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) and 7 years in cases tried within the scope of the Anti-Terrorism Law (TMK), ended as of October 25. Her lawyers applied to Ankara 22nd High Criminal Court, which is handling the Kobanê Case, where Kışanak is being tried for her release within the scope of long detention.

 

Kışanak said that imprisonment has turned into a method of punishment at the hearing of the case on December 8, 2023 and added: “There is a long period of imprisonment. I have been imprisonment for a longer period of time than anywhere else in the world. What does 7 years of imprisonment mean? This period is currently longer than the execution of many punishments in Turkey. With your logic, you can give me arrest warrants many times and detain me for life. There can be no such logic, it is a waste of reason.”

 

At the hearing held on February 3, the court rejected the release demands for Sebahat Tuncel along with Gültan Kışanak, who completed the maximum imprisonment period of 7 years.