Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party to replace jailed chief

Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party will elect two new leaders on Sunday, one of whom will replace its charismatic jailed co-chief Selahattin Demirtas, ahead of elections in 2019.

Demirtas, the best-known face of the left-wing Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), has been behind bars since November 2016, detained on terrorism charges, and faces a possible 142-year prison sentence.

In January, he appeared before an Istanbul court on separate charges of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Whoever succeeds Demirtas will lead a party isolated in parliament and be aware that many of the group's beliefs will likely clash with Erdogan.

The HDP has regularly accused the president of "authoritarianism", many of its MPs and members have been detained, and it opposes Turkey's current offensive against a Kurdish militia in northern Syria.

The HDP has described the operation against the People's Protection Units (YPG) as an "invasion" that targets Kurds "as a people", but Ankara views the YPG as a "terrorist" offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has fought the Turkish state for decades.

The YPG militia was the principle ally of the United States in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria.

At the HDP congress on Sunday, the party will choose a man to replace Demirtas and a woman to replace its other co-leader Serpil Kemalbay, who took over from another incarcerated former leader, Figen Yuksekdag.

The party says it always has a woman and man in leadership positions in the interests of equality.

Sezai Temelli, a former MP, and Pervin Buldan, who is serving in parliament, have been nominated to become the new co-leaders, the party said this week.