{"id":22540,"date":"2018-11-20T15:22:11","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T15:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=22540"},"modified":"2018-11-20T15:22:11","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T15:22:11","slug":"erdogan-rejects-european-courts-non-binding-decision-over-pro-kurdish-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=22540","title":{"rendered":"Erdogan rejects European court\u2019s \u2018non-binding\u2019 decision over pro-Kurdish leader"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<h2>Erdogan rejects European court\u2019s \u2018non-binding\u2019 decision over pro-Kurdish leader<\/h2>\n<div itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1407981\/middle-east\" readability=\"46\">\n<p>\nANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday rejected a decision by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights calling for the release of pro-Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas.<br \/>\u201cThe decisions delivered by the ECHR do not bind us,\u201d Erdogan was quoted as saying by the state-run Anadolu news agency.<br \/>The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday called on Turkey to release pro-Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas, saying his detention since 2016 on terror charges was aimed at \u201cstifling pluralism.\u201d<br \/>Demirtas, one of two former co-leaders of the leftist pro-Kurdish Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (HDP), was arrested in November 2016 over his alleged links to Kurdish militants.<br \/>At the time of his arrest he was a member of parliament.<br \/>The court in the French city of Strasbourg said it accepted that Demirtas had been arrested on \u201creasonable suspicion\u201d of committing a crime, but said the reasons given for keeping him behind bars were not \u201csufficient\u201d and constituted \u201can unjustified interference with the free expression of the opinion of the people.\u201d<br \/>It found that the extension of his detention, particularly during a referendum on expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s powers and later a presidential election, were aimed at \u201cstifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate, which was at the very core of the concept of a democratic society.\u201d<br \/>\u201cThe court therefore held, unanimously, that the respondent state was to take all necessary measures to put an end to the applicant\u2019s pre-trial detention,\u201d it added.<br \/>The ECHR hears cases of alleged violations of the European Convention on Human Rights of which Turkey is a signatory.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>(With AFP)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Erdogan rejects European court\u2019s \u2018non-binding\u2019 decision over pro-Kurdish leader ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday rejected a decision by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights calling for the release of pro-Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas.\u201cThe decisions delivered by the ECHR do not bind us,\u201d Erdogan was quoted as saying by the state-run Anadolu&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":22541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}