PROSECUTORS in Turkey could seek a sentence of more than 15,000 years for former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) leader Selahattin Demirtas after new charges against him were accepted last week.

The Ankara 22nd High Criminal Court accepted a file submitted on December 28 against 108 largely Kurdish politicians in relation to the so-called Kobane case and charged Mr Demirtas with 37 killings.

The deaths came at the hands of Turkish security services during protests in October 2014, when Turkey’s army allowed Isis to besiege the Syrian border town of Kobani while refusing to allow aid and support to reach its people.

Mr Demirtas and fellow former HDP co-chair Figen Yuksekdag have been charged with “disrupting the unity of the state,” among other offences.

He has also been charged with the death of Yasin Boru in 2014. The case has already been heard by a court and did not involve Mr Demirtas.

Kurdish journalist Seda Taskin calculated his potential sentence as being up to 15,510 years on charges which also include looting, burning the Turkish flag and damaging property.

In December, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Mr Demirtas’s detention was political and ordered his immediate release.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slapped down the ruling, branding it hypocritical and “entirely political.”