The Parliamentary Constitution-Justice Joint Committee on Thursday voted in favor of lifting the pro-PKK opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Semra Güzel's immunity on charges of "being a member of a terrorist organization."
The final decision regarding the lifting of Güzel's immunity will be taken at the General Assembly of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM).
The decision is expected to pave the way for criminal proceedings against the lawmaker.
Photos of Güzel with PKK terrorist Volkan Bora were widely circulated in Turkish media last month.
PKK terrorist Volkan Bora, code-named “Koçero Meleti,” whom the HDP lawmaker claimed was her fiance, was one of the perpetrators of two terrorist attacks in Adıyaman province. He was part of the terrorist squad that killed gendarmerie Cpl. Müsellim Ünal and a soldier named Mücahit Şimşek on June 24, 2016, and a village guard named Yusuf Sönmez on Sept. 9, 2016.
Bora was killed in a counterterrorism operation in Turkey’s southeastern Adıyaman province in 2017.
Güzel defended the pictures, claiming that she had been engaged to the terrorist and the photos were being used as "propaganda" to target her.
She said they got engaged after a romantic relationship while they were in university and that she was unable to see him between 2009 and 2014.
She claimed that she went to northern Iraq some time between 2013-2015, during the reconciliation period, to see her “loved one” and that she was not a member of a political party back then.
