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| - Turkey's parliament on Wednesday revoked the seat of an opposition party MP and outspoken rights defender after his controversial conviction over a social media post. Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu has been a thorn in the flesh for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, shining a light on a variety of human rights violations that often go ignored by the mainstream Turkish media. The 55-year-old represents the pro-Kurdish leftist Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), Turkey's second-largest opposition party. Turkey's top appeals court last month upheld his 2018 conviction for "spreading terrorism propaganda" over a post he shared in 2016 before he was elected an MP in the northwestern province of Kocaeli. He had shared and commented on a story which reported on an outlawed Kurdish militant group calling on the Turkish state to take a step towards peace. Kurdish militias have been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Gergerlioglu, who will now see his immunity from prosecution lifted, defiantly declared in parliament that he will have to be forcibly removed from the chamber. "I came here to parliament representing the people's will," said Gergerlioglu, who is also a physician, accusing the parliament of committing a "crime" against him. "I'm not going anywhere," he shouted, calling the decision "unconstitutional". Gergerlioglu was supported by fellow HDP MPs, some of whom applauded Gergerlioglu and banged on tables in the general assembly while chanting "rights, law, justice". "We're not going to be silent, we're not scared, we're not going to submit," the MPs chanted as the standoff stretched into the late afternoon. "#GergerliogluYalnizDegildir", which means "Gergerlioglu is not alone", become a top Twitter trend in Turkey. Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch denounced the decision on Twitter as "a shocking attack on democratic norms and the rule of law, a violation of Turkey's constitution, laws and obligations under international law." Although he has long been an irritant for Erdogan, his advocacy for female detainees subjected to strip searches particularly angered the government last year. Ruling party MP Ozlem Zengin last month denied that women's rights were being violated. The debate intensified after a public backlash against Zengin's comments claiming that "honourable" women would not wait months or years to report such experiences. raz/zak/mjs
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