Selahattin Demirtas

Selahattin Demirtas, a Kurdish politician, lawyer and author, was born on April 10, 1973, in Palu, Elazig, Turkey, into a Zaza family, and holds a law degree from Ankara University's Faculty of Law. Before entering politics he worked as a freelance lawyer, joining the executive committee of the Diyarbakir branch of the Human Rights Association in 2000 and becoming its chair in 2004. He served as co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, HDP, alongside Figen Yuksekdag from 2014 to 2018, was the HDP's presidential candidate in the 2014 election, finishing third, and led the party to a fourth-place finish with 13.12 percent of the vote and 80 seats in the June 2015 parliamentary election. Imprisoned since November 2016, he was again the HDP's presidential candidate in 2018, receiving 8.4 percent of the vote while incarcerated; he remains imprisoned at Edirne F-type prison, where he has continued to write books.