Aysel Tuğluk

Who is Aysel Tuğluk?

Aysel Tuğluk is a pro-Kurdish Zaza politician of the former Democratic Society Party in Turkey. She graduated in law from Istanbul University and then worked as a lawyer. She was previously a member of the executive council of the Foundation for Society and Legal Studies.

As well as being a member of the Turkish Human Rights Association, she is a founder member of the Patriotic Women's Association. Elected to the Turkish Parliament in 2007, as an MP for Diyarbakir, she is regarded as a member of the moderate wing of the party. She previously acted as a lawyer for Abdullah Öcalan.

In 2007 she was sentenced to 18 months in jail, when she was DTP chairwoman, over the distribution of party leaflets in the Kurdish language, a violation of the law that requires all political literature be in Turkish.

On 5 February 2009 Tuğluk was again sentenced, this time to 18 months in prison by a court in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir for violating anti-terrorism laws by referring to PKK fighters as 'heroes to some' at a rally in 2006.

Aysel Tuğluk's status as an elected Member of Parliament gave her legal immunity from going to prison. But in December 2009 the Turkish Constitutional Court stripped her of her Member of Parliament status, and banned her from public politics for five years. The Constitutional Court also outlawed the DTP political party. The Constitutional Court's decision was based on a judgment that she and the DTP have affiliations with the PKK, an organization that does not disavow violence for attaining political objectives. She and the DTP continue to deny such affiliations, and they disavow violence.