Imprisoned Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtaş said in messages posted on his Twitter account on Saturday that his cell was searched after tweets were sent from that same account on Sept. 16.
“There was only an electric kettle to make tea in my cell,” the jailed co-chairperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said sarcastically in his latest Twitter messages.
It was stated that the tweets clearly were not sent from prison.
“Do not say that we already know that you cannot tweet from prison since there are those in Ankara who do not know that,” Demirtaş said. Describing the search as “tragicomic,” Demirtaş said that “naturally no tweets were found in my cell” and went on to say that the officials decided that no tweets could be sent from a kettle.
As part of escalating pressure on Kurdish politicians in Turkey, Demirtaş had been detained last October. He has been imprisoned on charges of terrorist propaganda among other alleged crimes since Nov. 4.
Turkey increased its crackdown against the Kurdish political movement following a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016 and arrested and removed scores of Kurdish local and national political figures.