Presidential candidate and jailed politician Selahattin Demirtaş will be taken to Ankara for videos to be broadcast on state-run TRT for the upcoming elections in Turkey on June 24, the Anadolu news agency reported on Thursday.
The Supreme Election Board (YSK) approved an application from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) for Demirtaş to record two 10-minute-long campaign speeches at TRT studios in Ankara, like other candidates.
Demirtaş will travel to Ankara on June 13 for the first taping and then again on June 22.
TRT will start to broadcast the speeches of presidential candidates on June 17, with Doğu Perinçek appearing first, followed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Selahattin Demirtaş, Temel Karamollaoğlu and Meral Akşener.
Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate Muharrem İnce has refused to appear on TRT, which he criticized for a lack of news coverage on the opposition.
Demirtaş has been under pretrial detention since November 2016 in Edirne Prison.
Yesterday he addressed the Turkish public in a speech delivered from prison via a telephone call to his wife.
“I think this is the first time in the world that a presidential candidate will deliver a campaign speech from prison,” he said in a statement to announce his telephone address.
On May 29 Demirtaş’s lawyers applied to Turkey’s Constitutional Court for his release.
Demirtaş ran against Erdoğan in the 2014 presidential election and lost. However, he has remained one of the most popular political figures in Turkey.