CHP lawmaker suffers heart spasm during protest march

By Mehmet Tosun & Enes Duran

SAKARYA, Turkey (AA) - A lawmaker of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) had a heart spasm on Friday during a protest march from Ankara to Istanbul, a party official said.

Huseyin Yildiz, deputy of the Aegean Aydin city, suffered the spasm as the march -- which started after a party deputy got 25 years in prison for espionage -- passed by northwestern Sakarya province on its sixteenth day.

According to the party's Deputy Chairman Veli Agbaba, Yildiz was taken to Sakarya Training and Research Hospital and may be later transferred to a hospital in Ankara

Yildiz's condition remains unclear.

Last week, another party supporter died after he suffered a suspected heart attack during the protest march from Ankara to Istanbul.

The march was launched by CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu following the jailing of party lawmaker Enis Berberoglu, who was sentenced to 25 years for giving a newspaper information on the transportation of arms to Syria.

Kilicdaroglu intends to complete the 450 km (280 miles) walk from the capital to Maltepe prison in Istanbul, where Berberoglu is being held, in 24 days.

He is accompanied by CHP deputies and supporters, as well as family members.

Berberoglu was convicted of revealing state secrets by passing images to the Cumhuriyet newspaper, of the Turkish intelligence agency National Intelligence Organization trucks en route to Syria, in January 2014.

He is the first CHP deputy to be imprisoned in recent years. Around a dozen lawmakers from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) are currently jailed, mostly awaiting trial over alleged links to the PKK terror group.

In May last year, parliament voted to strip lawmakers facing trial of their parliamentary immunity.