A Turkish court on Tuesday ruled for the release of Nimet Tanrıkulu, a prominent human rights activist, after she had spent 94 days in pretrial detention at an Ankara prison on terrorism-related charges, the Gazete Duvar news website reported.
Tanrıkulu was among a group of politicians and activists detained in a police operation in late November.
She was taken into custody at her home in İstanbul. After a short period of detention at a police station, she was transferred to the Ankara Police Department’s counterterrorism branch. Following four days in police custody, she was put in pretrial detention at Ankara’s Sincan Prison on November 30.
The İstanbul 24th High Criminal Court, which held the first hearing of Tanrıkulu’s trial on Tuesday, ordered her release despite the prosecutor’s request to continue her detention.
She is being tried on charges of membership in a terrorist organization — the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging a bloody campaign in Turkey’s southeast since 1984 and is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.
The hearing was attended by representatives from several human rights organizations, a number of rights activists and a delegation from the European Union.
In her testimony Tanrıkulu denied the charges against her, saying she has dedicated 40 years of her life to human rights, while calling the trial an attempt to “discredit” human rights defenders.
“I am a human rights defender and a feminist. I carry out my human rights work openly and transparently, without engaging in any covert activities. A peace process is underway now, and I find it valuable. I hereby request my release,” she told the court.
Her release comes at a time when jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan has called on his militant organization to lay down its arms and disband, in a historic statement read out in İstanbul last week, which raised hopes about the end of the decades-long conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Öcalan made the call as a result of peace talks with him initiated by a far-right leader Devlet Bahçeli and endorsed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last year.
Tanrıkulu is a prominent human rights defender and a founding member of the Diyarbakır-based Human Rights Association. She has been active in Turkey’s human rights community for several decades, including campaigning with the Saturday Mothers, a group of relatives of victims of enforced disappearances and their supporters seeking truth, justice and accountability.
In a December statement, Amnesty International called for the immediate release of Tanrıkulu, saying that it is deeply concerned that she is being maliciously investigated due to her human rights work.
Amnesty accused Turkish authorities of misusing counterterrorism investigations to silence those who defend human rights and recalling that Tanrıkulu has herself faced such malicious investigations on at least two occasions.