Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party elected two new leaders on Sunday, one of whom replaced its charismatic jailed co-chief Selahattin Demirtas, ahead of elections in 2019. Demirtas, the best-known face of the left-wing Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), has been behind bars since November 2016, detained on terrorism charges, and faces a possible 142-year prison sentence.
Former MP Sezai Temelli, 54, was voted by party delegates to replace Demirtas while Pervin Buldan, 50, was elected co-chair as well. Buldan, a serving MP and deputy parliament speaker, replaces Serpil Kemalbay, who herself took over from another incarcerated former leader, Figen Yuksekdag. The party says it always has a woman and man in leadership positions in the interests of equality.
There was heavy security at the congress in Ankara where the venue was filled with several thousand HDP supporters waving the party's symbol of a tree. The new leaders take over a party isolated in parliament where many of its beliefs will likely clash with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The HDP has regularly accused the president of "authoritarianism", many of its MPs and members have been detained, and it opposes Turkey's current offensive against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia in northern Syria. Ankara views the YPG as a "terrorist" offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has fought the Turkish state for decades.
"The solution is not with war but with peace, not with dying or with killing, it is with living and to keep (others) alive," Buldan told supporters. The new co-chairs will attempt to lead the party to a fresh start ahead of general and presidential elections in November 2019.