Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party on Wednesday said its charismatic former leader Selahattin Demirtas would be its candidate for president in polls next month, even though he is currently jailed and on trial in several legal cases.
The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) had agreed Demirtas as its candidate and his campaign would be launched in simultaneous rallies in Istanbul and the majority Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Friday afternoon, the party said.
A demonstrator holds up a poster of Selahattin Demirtas, the jailed former co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), during a May Day rally in Istanbul, Turkey.