ISTANBUL: He may be languishing in jail but with his books flying off the shelves, Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas has joined an illustrious line of Turkish prison writers.
A former presidential candidate in the side of Turkey's current leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Demirtas has spent more than three years in jail and faces up to 142 years more if convicted of ties to Kurdish militants, which he denies.
Despite the possible sentence hanging over him he has found some consolation in his ever-growing number of readers as sales of his books, written in Turkish, reach into the hundreds of thousands.
His first book, “Seher” (Dawn), was published in 2017 – a collection of short stories that contain glimpses into daily lives of ordinary people including women characters whose voices often go unheard.
It has turned into a runaway success, translated into 16 languages with 240,000 copies printed.
Demirtas has followed up with another short story collection "Devran," and now a full novel, "Leylan."
He remains fiercely defiant against those who have locked him up: "No matter what black propaganda and slander they hide behind, our resistance will be overpowering."
