 said he did not regret supporting a 2016 vote that helped clear the way for the imprisonment of former Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş.){kind=link}
Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party has demanded an apology from Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu after the court-reinstated leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) said he did not regret supporting a 2016 vote that helped clear the way for the imprisonment of former Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş.
A Kılıçdaroğlu aide said the CHP leader would visit Demirtaş in prison after the backlash, while BBC’s Turkish service reported that sources from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) said no such request had reached Demirtaş’s lawyers or advisers.
Necdet Saraç, the CHP vice chair in charge of social policies under Kılıçdaroğlu, said on CNN Türk on June 21 that Kılıçdaroğlu would visit Demirtaş in the coming days. He later told BBC that preliminary talks would be held and that the timing of the visit was expected to become clear by June 24.
The controversy began during Kılıçdaroğlu’s appearance on Sözcü TV on June 20, when he was asked how the CHP would respond if parliament received a file seeking to lift the immunity of Özgür Özel, who replaced him as CHP chairman in 2023 before being removed by a court ruling in May.
Kılıçdaroğlu said that if he faced such an allegation, he would want his immunity lifted so he could be cleared.
Journalist Barış Terkoğlu then asked whether he regretted supporting the 2016 constitutional amendment that removed the parliamentary immunity of dozens of lawmakers, including Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, then co-chairs of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the predecessor of the DEM Party.
“No,” Kılıçdaroğlu said.
He added that parliament already had a majority for lifting Demirtaş’s immunity and said the CHP’s own party decisions at the time required support for the measure. Kılıçdaroğlu also said he considered Demirtaş’s imprisonment to be wrong and had said so before.
DEM Party officials reacted with anger, saying Kılıçdaroğlu’s position helped legitimize a process that sent elected Kurdish politicians to prison under the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Tülay Hatimoğulları, co-chair of the DEM Party, said on Halk TV on June 21 that Kılıçdaroğlu should apologize.
“You knew the government was using the judiciary as a stick, so how could you support the lifting of immunities?” she said.
Hatimoğulları said it was clear at the time that Demirtaş, Yüksekdağ and other HDP officials would be arrested once their immunity was removed.
“The mentality that put our friends in prison after their immunities were lifted is the same mentality that appoints leaders today,” she said, referring to the court ruling that returned Kılıçdaroğlu to CHP leadership.
Sırrı Sakık, a DEM Party lawmaker from the eastern province of Ağrı, said supporting Kılıçdaroğlu in Turkey’s 2023 presidential election had been “the biggest mistake” of his political life.
The 2016 amendment was backed by Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), its far-right ally the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and part of the CHP. Kılıçdaroğlu said at the time that the proposal was unconstitutional but that CHP lawmakers would support it because politicians should not hide behind immunity.
Demirtaş and Yüksekdağ were arrested in November 2016. Both remain imprisoned despite European Court of Human Rights rulings finding rights violations in their cases and Council of Europe calls for their release.
Özel, who was removed as CHP chairman by the court ruling that reinstated Kılıçdaroğlu, had taken the opposite position on the 2016 vote. In a November 2025 speech, he said the CHP bore responsibility for backing the measure and apologized for the party’s role.
The dispute comes as the CHP faces a leadership crisis triggered by a May court ruling that annulled the party’s 2023 congress, removed Özel and restored Kılıçdaroğlu, who lost Turkey’s 2023 presidential election to Erdoğan.