Istanbul opposition leader sentenced to nearly 10 years

Source:Yahoo News Date:07Sep2019

The head of Turkey’s main opposition party in Istanbul was sentenced to nearly 10 years on Friday on a range of charges including “terrorist propaganda” and insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The charges related mostly to tweets that Canan Kaftancioglu, of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP), posted between 2012 and 2017.

“The decisions are not taken in the courts, but in the (presidential) palace,” she told hundreds of supporters outside the court after the judgement.

Kaftancioglu, a doctor by profession, played a key role in the shock victory of the CHP’s new Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu earlier this year — the first time Erdogan’s party had lost power in Turkey’s biggest city for 25 years.

The sentencing came just hours after Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul held a press conference in Ankara on the subject of an imminent judicial reforms package.

“Our first package of judicial reform includes regulations that further secure freedom of thought and expression, eliminate arbitrariness in arrest and differences in implementation,” Gul said, according to the Bianet news site.