Opposition Turkish lawmaker regains seat after jail

Enis Berberoglu, a deputy in Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), officially regained his position as an MP on Thursday after an Istanbul court halted criminal complaints against him.

Berberoglu had beeen convicted of disclosing confidential state documents related to Syria.

The Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court dropped charges against Berberoglu on Monday following a ruling by the country’s Constitutional Court which decided unanimously on Jan. 21 that Berberoglu’s rights to stand for elections and engage in political activities had been violated by lower courts because legal proceedings against him should have been suspended due to his re-election as a member of parliament during the country’s June 2018 elections.

Berberoglu, a former journalist, was sentenced by a lower court to five years and 10 months in jail in 2017 for his role in leaking confidential documents about National Intelligence Organization trucks allegedly carrying weapons bound for Syria.

He was found guilty of espionage and providing footage of the trucks to a dissident journalist.

Although he was reelected to parliament in June 2018, he was not released from jail until September that year, when the Court of Cassation postponed his sentence due to his reelection.

In June 2020, the Turkish parliament stripped parliamentary immunity from Berberoglu for the parliamentary term 2015-2018, and he was placed under house arrest to serve the rest of his initial sentence.

But rights activists and lawyers consistently repeated that his reelection in 2018 meant his parliamentary immunity still applied, a claim that has now been upheld by Turkey’s highest court.

“While the Constitutional Court’s ruling on Enis Berberoglu and his subsequent return to parliament are positive first steps, they should be the rule, not the exception,” Gina S. Lentine, senior program officer for Europe and Eurasia at Freedom House, told Arab News.

Freedom House emphasizes that this same precedent should be applied to other politicians who have been jailed for their roles in the opposition, including Leyla Guven and Selahattin Demirtas, former lawmakers from the HDP.