A Gaziantep regional court has approved jail sentences for four Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) members who are also standing as parliamentary candidates in the snap elections on June 24, the Doğan news agency reported on Friday.
Leyla Güven, Tayyip Temel, Musa Farisoğulları and Pero Dündar were detained in 2009 as part of an investigation into the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) and were sentenced to prison in March 2017.
Güven, a co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), has been in pretrial detention since January due to another investigation launched over remarks concerning the Turkish military operation in the Afrin region of northern Syria.
Temel, former editor-in-chief of the Kurdish Azadiye Welat daily, was detained in 2011 as part of a KCK investigation and released two years later.
Farisoğulları, also a member of the DTK, was put in pretrial detention in August 2017 as part of an investigation into the DTK.
Dündar, a politician from the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), was detained in 2009 in a KCK investigation and released in 2014; however, she was also put in pretrial detention in April 2016 as part of another probe and released in May 2017.
The Gaziantep court on Wednesday also approved the prison sentence of jailed HDP deputy İdris Baluken, another parliamentary candidate for the snap elections.