Hatip Dicle

Mehmet Hatip Dicle (born 1955, Diyarbakir, Turkey), is a Kurdish politician from Turkey. He was a member of the Democracy Party, then of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).

Early life and education Dicle grew up in a Kurdish family with Islamic values. He attended the Ziya Gökalp high school in Diyarbakir and enrolled into the civil engineering department of the Istanbul Technical University from which he graduated in 1979. 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, As a chairman, he guided the DEP through violent times as DEP politicians and members were detained and its candidates homes where raided by the Turkish authorities ahead of the Municipal elections of 1994. As a consequence, he announced in February 1994 that the party would not run in the elections due to an "anti-democratic environment".

Prosecution On 2 March 1994, Parliament lifted the parliamentary immunity of Dicle and he was arrested. On 8 August 1994 he was convicted, together with Leyla Zana, Orhan Doğan and Selim Sadak of membership in an organization (Kurdistan Workers' Party) and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

He was one of the first Co-Chairs of the Democratic Society Congress after its foundation in 2007.

After the DTP was closed down in early December 2009, Dicle was again arrested as part of the KCK investigation. supported by the Labour, Democracy and Freedom Block and was elected with 78.220 votes. 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.

In 2014 he was released from prison