A Turkish court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on Friday ruled for the release of Kurdish political Leyla Güven, who has been on hunger strike since Nov. 7, Duvar news site reported .
Güven, who is both the co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress, an umbrella organisation for Kurdish groups, and a member of parliament for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was jailed after being arrested in January 2018 for criticising Turkey’s military operation against Kurdish forces in northwest Syria.
The 54-year-old politician began her hunger strike to protest the state’s treatment of Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Öcalan has been barred from meeting his lawyers and has had only limited family visits since the collapse of a peace process between the state and the PKK in 2015 that aimed to end three decades of conflict.