Quick Facts
Biography
Hatip Dicle (born 1954, Diyarbakir, Turkey), full name Mehmet Hatip Dicle, is a Turkish politician, of Kurdish origin, of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).
Career
In 1979 he graduated in engineering from the Istanbul Technical University. He began his political activity in the 1970s, joining the People's Labor Party (HEP) (Halkin Emek Partisi, working party of the people).
1990s
In 1993, the HEP was banned. In anticipation of the ban, the Kurdish politicians had already set up the Democracy Party (Demokrasi Partisi, or DEP). On 12 December 1993, Dicle was elected party chairman.
On 2 March 1994, Parliament lifted the immunity of Dicle and on the same day he was arrested. On 8 December 1994 he was convicted, with Leyla Zana, Orhan Doğan and Selim Sadak, of membership in an organization (PKK) and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
On 9 June 2004, the four prisoners were released after a retrial and pressure from the European Union, but Dicle was still banned from political activity.
He was sentenced to 20 months in prison for a statement that he made to the ANKA agency in 2007 about the Kurdish question. This was interpreted by the Ankara 11th High Criminal Court as siding with terrorism, although other commentators have pointed out that the statement was advocating a peaceful solution and that the sentence is evidence of Turkey's curbs on freedom of expression.
Dicle was again arrested in April 2010 as part of the KCK investigation.
2011 election
In the June 2011 parliamentary elections he ran as an independent candidate for the Diyarbakir Province, supported by the BDP. He was elected with 77,669 votes. However, after the election, Turkey's Supreme Election Board (TSK) annulled his election, because of his former conviction on a terrorist charge. His fellow MPs reacted by boycotting the Parliament. He was replaced in the Turkish Parliament by a member of the AK Party, Oya Eronat, who had come sixth in the election, with a much smaller vote.
Rıza Türmen, former Turkish Ambassador to the Council of Europe and judge at the European Court of Human Rights, condemned the decision as "not only against universal laws, it also violates national regulation and norms". He called for Articles 7 and 76 of the Turkish Constitution to be amended to prevent such situations arising in future.
His case was also taken up by British MPs who lodged an early day motion in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.