As well as being a member of the Turkish Human Rights Association, she is a founding member of the Patriotic Women's Association. She was a candidate of the Thousand Hopes alliance in the elections to the Turkish Parliament in 2007, and was elected MP for Diyarbakir. She previously acted as a lawyer for Abdullah Öcalan. Aysel Tuğluk's status as an elected Member of Parliament gave her legal immunity from going to prison due to a sentence of 1 year and 6 months imprisonment. But in December 2009 the Turkish Constitutional Court stripped her of her Member of Parliament status, and banned her from public politics for five years. The Constitutional Court also outlawed the DTPpolitical party. The Constitutional Court's decision was based on a judgment that she and the DTP have affiliations with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, an organization that does not disavow violence for attaining political objectives. She and the DTP continue to deny such affiliations, and they disavow violence. She was re-elected as an Member of Parliament in the 12 June 2011 general election having run as an independent.
Legal prosecution
Sentences of 2007 and 2009
In 2007 she was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment over the distribution of party leaflets in the Kurdish language, which is forbidden according to the law, which requires all political literature be in Turkish. On 5 February 2009 Tuğluk was sentenced again, this time to 18 months in prison by a court in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir for violating anti-terrorism laws by referring to PKK fighters as 'heroes to some' at a rally in 2006.
Sentence of 2012
In June 2012 Aysel Tuğluk was sentenced to 14 years and 7 months imprisonment for charges of "committing a crime on behalf of the armed terrorist organization PKK without being a member" and also for "making propaganda on behalf of a terrorist organization" for ten speeches she held. Her lawyers defended her, arguing that she held the speeches in the aim of fomenting fraternity and unity. The authorities just picked a few phrases they did not agree with. The defendants lawyers said they appealed the sentence at the Supreme Court of Appeals.
Sentences of 2018
On the 26 December 2016 she was arrested and in January 2018 sentenced to 1 year and 6 months in prison for “Opposing the law on rallies and demonstrations". In March 2018 she was sentenced to another 10 years in prison for being a "leader of a terror organization". It was argued that she took orders from Abdullah Öcalan, made statements to media outlets close to the PKK and attended funerals of terrorists. She denied being a member of a terrorist organization and that she was only member of the Democratic Society Congress and the HDP, which are not terror organizations.
