Ziya Pir (born 1970 in Torul, Gümüşhane Province, Turkey) is a Turkish and German entrepreneur and politician of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).
Ziya Pir | |
|---|---|
| Member of the Grand National Assembly | |
| Assumed office 7 June 2015 | |
| Constituency | Diyarbakır |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1970 Torul, Gümüşhane Province, Turkey |
| Political party | People's Democratic Party (HDP) |
Early life and education
Born in Turkey, Pir mostly grew up in Western Germany. Affiliated with the German liberal-conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, in 1999, Pir joined the CDU German-Turkish Forum. In 2002, he was tasked by Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with developing an organization for Turkish expatriates in Germany, the Union of European-Turkish Democrats (UETD). Appalled by both the UETD's increasing alignment with the AKP party and Erdoğans increasingly authoritarian conduct, he later broke with both.[1]
Political career in Turkey
Pir, who is a nephew of the famous ethnic Turkish co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, Kemal Pir, in 2015 decided to return to Turkey in order to join the newly founded pro-Kurdish opposition party HDP. In the June 2015 general election he was elected to represent his Diyarbakır constituency in the Turkish parliament[2] and was later confirmed in the November 2015 snap election.[3] In November 2016 he was arrested together with 10 other parliamentarians of the HDP party.[4] He was released from detention after he delivered his testimony concerning an indictment around an alleged insult of a public officer to the prosecutor of Diyarbakir.[5] In late 2017 he received a suspended sentence of 11 months and 20 days for calling the prosecutor who ordered raids on the Dicle Haber Ajansi, Azadiya Welat, KURDÎ-DER and Aram Publishing in Diyarbakır province on 28 September 2015, during which 32 journalists were detained a "candidate as a palace jester".[6] In December 2017, his parliamentary immunity was demanded to be lifted due to him organizing a protest while "sitting on the stairs" in front of the BDP party building in Diyarbakır.[7] On the 17 March 2021, the Turkish state prosecutor before the Court of Cassation Bekir Şahin filed a lawsuit before the Constitutional Court demanding for Pir and 686 other HDP politicians a five-year ban on political activities.[8] The lawsuit was filed together with request for a closure of the HDP due to their alleged organizational links with the PKK.[9]