An election campaign video of Selahattin Demirtaş, the former co-chairperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who has been jailed in Turkey since November 2016, was removed from YouTube after Turkey’s state broadcaster TRT claimed that it owned the copyright to the clip.
The video, recorded in prison, was removed by YouTube, the Mezopotamya news agency reported on Wednesday.
The videos of other opposition leaders, however, still remain on YouTube, although TRT holds their copyrights as well.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled on Nov. 20 that Demirtaş’s pre-trial detention was a political act and ordered his release. Turkish courts refused to implement the European court’s ruling, and a regional appeals court in Turkey on Dec. 4 upheld Demirtaş’s four year, eight month prison sentence for disseminating terrorist propaganda.
Demirtaş unsuccessfully ran against incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the 2014 and 2018 presidential elections. In his second attempt, the Kurdish politician had to conduct his election campaign from jail.
