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Selahattin Demirtaş in 2016
Photo: ADEM ALTAN / AFP
A court in Ankara has sentenced the pro-Kurdish opposition politician Selahattin Demirtaş to another prison term.
The Turkish media report.
The court sentenced the former head of the pro-Kurdish party HDP to two and a half years in prison for alleged threats against a public prosecutor.
According to TV broadcaster TRT Haber, Demirtaş had denied the allegations.
Demirtaş has long been a dangerous rival for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Then he was accused of "terrorism" by the government in Ankara and in November 2016 he was arrested.
In the ongoing main trial of the terrorism allegations, Demirtaş faces up to 142 years in prison - even though the Turkish Constitutional Court had classified his detention as illegal.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) also condemned Demirtaş's long imprisonment and repeatedly demanded his release.
The HDP is the second largest opposition party in Turkey.
The Islamic nationalist government has been cracking down on the party for years, and many of its supporters and representatives are in prison.
President Erdoğan accuses the HDP of being the political arm of the banned underground organization PKK.
The HDP regularly rejects this.
Anniversary of the Gezi protests
Erdoğan was meanwhile in Istanbul and inaugurated a mosque there on Taksim Square.
Taksim Square is right next to Gezi Park.
It was here that the Gezi protests, which were critical of the government, began exactly eight years ago.
Thousands of people came to the building in the Turkish capital on Friday.
The mosque, which can accommodate 4,000 believers, was already heavily criticized at the start of construction in 2017: Opponents accused Erdoğan of wanting to Islamize the country and symbolically oust the founder of the state Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The mosque overshadows the monument of the republic, which represents important representatives of the Turkish War of Independence and has so far been the main attraction of Taksim Square.
The date of initiation has a high symbolic value.
On May 28, 2013, eight years ago, protests began against plans by then Prime Minister Erdoğan to build on Gezi Park.
After a brutal police operation against environmentalists, they spread across the country.
Erdoğan only succeeded in suppressing the protest movement for weeks.
The current president sees it as a conspiracy to overthrow his government.
lau / AFP