Selim Sadak

Selim Sadak, (born 1954 in İdil, Şırnak) is a Turkish politician of Kurdish origin, currently the mayor of Siirt.

Selim Sadak graduated from the Mathematics department of Diyarbakır Eğitim Enstitüsü. Subsequently to his graduation, he worked as a freelancer in Kurdish, English and Arabic.

He is married and has 10 children.

In the 1991 Turkey Parliamentary general election, he joined Leyla Zana, Mahmut Alınak, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Doğan, Ahmet Türk, Sırrı Sakık and Sedat Yurtdaş in the Social Democratic Populist Party and was elected as the member of parliament for Şırnak in the 19th Parliament of Turkey. On 16 June 1994 the Democracy Party was closed down by the Turkish Constitutional Court, and Selim Sadak, along with other members of the party, were put in prison. Based on a decision by the Start Security Court he was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1995. He was released in 2004 following a European Court of Human Rights decision.

Following his release from prison, him along with Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle set up the Democratic Society Party, and was elected mayor of Siirt under the Democratic Society Party, receiving 49,43% of the votes in the 2009 local Turkish elections.

In December 2009, however, Turkey banned the DTP due to alleged links with the PKK and Selim Sadak as well as Ahmet Türk, Aysel Tuğluk, Leyla Zana and Nurettin Demirtaş, were banned from politics for 5 years.

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