{"id":23014,"date":"2018-11-23T23:24:03","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T23:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23014"},"modified":"2018-11-23T23:24:03","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T23:24:03","slug":"turkey-indicts-gulen-for-2016-assassination-of-russian-envoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23014","title":{"rendered":"Turkey indicts Gulen for 2016 assassination of Russian envoy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"88\">\n<p>\nANKARA: Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday accused the EU\u2019s top diplomat of overstepping her brief by calling for the release of jailed Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cShe exceeded her limits a little,\u201d Cavusoglu told CNN-Turk television a day after Federica Mogherini expressed hope that Demirtas, who has been held in Turkey for two years on terror charges, would be freed soon.<\/p>\n<p>\nDemirtas, 45, one of two former co-leaders of the leftist Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (HDP), was arrested in November 2016 over alleged links to Kurdish militants.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday urged Ankara to release Demirtas \u2014 who hailed the move as \u201clegal acknowledgment of my status as a political hostage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nThe court accepted Demirtas had been arrested on \u201creasonable suspicion\u201d of having committed a crime, but said the reasons given for keeping him behind bars were not \u201csufficient.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nMogherini\u2019s view<\/p>\n<p>\nAt a press conference with Cavusoglu in Ankara, Mogherini said on Thursday: \u201cWe hope he will be released shortly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nDemirtas denies all the charges and claims the case against him is politically motivated.<\/p>\n<p>\nTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected the European court\u2019s finding.<\/p>\n<p>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"247\" src=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/userimages\/17\/untitled-2_copy_34.png\" width=\"257\">\u201cThe decisions delivered by the ECHR do not bind us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\nDemirtas on Friday accused the government of putting \u201cpolitical pressure\u201d on the Turkish appeals court to uphold his \u201ccompletely unlawful\u201d sentence, in a statement released by his party.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cWe are witnessing a clear political intervention,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cThe aim here is to sentence me with another contrived political decision to keep me imprisoned, before the ECHR implements its decision.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nBut he remained defiant, saying: \u201cWe will never bow down, and we will stand tall with determination, our spirits high.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nHe added: \u201cWe will, soon or later, emerge victorious in our struggle for law, justice, freedom and democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANKARA: Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday accused the EU\u2019s top diplomat of overstepping her brief by calling for the release of jailed Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas. \u201cShe exceeded her limits a little,\u201d Cavusoglu told CNN-Turk television a day after Federica Mogherini expressed hope that Demirtas, who has been held in Turkey for two&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23014","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\/23014","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=23014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}