Prison Break

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition leader insulted Erdogan and landed in jail. Now, he’s running for president from his cell

- Orlando Crowcroft

THREE YEARS AGO, SELAHATTIN Demirtas was celebrating a political revolution in Turkey.

Alarmed by the increasingly autocratic rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Kurdish former human rights lawyer had formed a new political party—the People’s Democratic Party, or HDP—and led it to victory in a historic election. For the first time, the country’s long-suppressed Kurdish minority was poised to take seats in Parliament, depriving the divisive president’s party of a majority and curbing his plans to expand his executive powers. “As of this hour, the debate about the presidency, the debate about dictatorship, is over,” Demirtas declared on election night in June 2015. “ Turkey narrowly averted a disaster.”

The victory was short-lived. Erdogan challenged the results, and five months later he regained his parliamentary majority in a snap election. Violence swept the country, with Kurdish militants and Turkish forces resuming a long-running war. After surviving a failed coup in 2016, Erdogan ordered a widespread crackdown on opposition groups. Demirtas and nine other HDP leaders found themselves behind bars, branded as terrorists. Among the dozens of charges heaped on him: insulting the president.

Now, the 45-year-old Demirtas is mounting a comeback, albeit from his two-man cell in Edirne Prison. On June 24, he will challenge Erdogan for the presidency. The centerpiece of his campaign: his own imprisonment. Holding a political figure for 14 months for making disparaging remarks, Demirtas argues, is evidence of how Erdogan has replaced democracy with a repressive one-party state. Over the past year, prosecutors have added dozens of charges, for a total of 142 years in jail.