The Commissioner for Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, and the former European Parliament rapporteur on Turkey, Kati Piri (S&D, Netherlands), denounced the sentencing on 6 September of the main leader of the CHP (Republican People's Party) in Istanbul, Canan Kaftancıoğlu, to nine years and eight months in prison for “terrorist propaganda” and for “insulting the Turkish President and Turkey” on social media between 2012 and 2017.
“I cannot understand how a politician's statements, even if found to be insulting, could ever warrant a 10-year prison sentence. For Canan Kaftancıoğlu or anyone else. In Istanbul or anywhere else”, Hahn declared on Twitter on 7 September, calling the announcement of the conviction “bad news”.
The day before, Mrs Piri explained that the S&D group in the European Parliament “strongly condemned [this] politically motivated conviction. The price to pay for winning the elections in Istanbul is apparently nine years in prison. Everyone knows that Canan Kaftancıoğlu is being punished for having run a successful campaign [...] The Turkish government is using the judiciary to punish its political opponents”, she declared.
The CHP candidate won the mayor's office in Istanbul against the AKP party candidate of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)