Pro-Kurdish MP returns to Turkish parliament

ANKARA: A pro-Kurdish opposition lawmaker returned to parliament on Friday after Turkey’s top court ruled that his jailing on terror charges violated his constitutional rights.

Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, 55, was stripped of his seat and arrested in March after being convicted of “spreading terrorist propaganda” in a social media post.

“Praise be to God,” Gergerlioglu tweeted as the decision to readmit him was read out in parliament. He represents the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which the government is trying to ban over its alleged links to outlawed militants waging a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.