Hişyar Özsoy | |
---|---|
Member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey | |
In office June 2015 – November 2015 | |
Constituency | Bingöl |
In office November 2015 – June 2018 | |
Constituency | Bingöl |
Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe | |
Assumed office 27 November 2015 | |
Personal details | |
Born | 26 June 1977 Bingöl, Bingöl |
Citizenship | Turkish |
Nationality | Kurdish |
Political party | HDP |
Alma mater | University of Texas Austin |
Occupation | Lecturer, political scientist, politician |
Hişyar Özsoy, (born 26 June 1977, Yeniköy, Bingöl) is a Turkish politician and academic of Kurdish descent. He is a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP)
Özsoy graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology from Boğaziçi University in 2002 [1] and earned a master's degree in 2004 and a Ph.D in Political Anthropology 2010, both from the University of Texas in Austin. [2] [1] From 2011 onwards he lectured at the University of Michigan. Özsoy is experienced in pedagogics and in 2012 he was chosen as a lecturer in the Thompson Center for learning and teaching of the University of Michigan. [3]
Özsoy began his political career working as a coordinator of foreign relations and a political consultant for the municipality in Diyarbakır between 2005 and 2008. [1] He was elected as member of Grand National Assembly of Turkey in the parliamentary elections of June 2015 for Bingöl representing the HDP, [4] and re-elected in the snap election in November 2015. [5] He was a candidate for the mayorship in Bingöl in the local elections of March 2019, but was not elected. [6] Özsoy has been elected into several international bodies. Since 2015 he is a member if the parliamentary group of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE). [7]
Since November 27, 2015 has been a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), since May 30, 2016 member of the United Left of Europe - Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group and on January 21, 2019 he became the vice president of the GUE/NGL. [8] In 2018 he was sent to the Parliamentary Assembly of the NATO. [9] Additionally, Özsoy is a member of the board of the Progressive Alliance since November 2019. [10]
Özsoy is the HDP vice-co chair for foreign politics [11] since 2016. [12] While in 2021 he was also celebrating the HDP's eight anniversary, he also contended the party was part of a longer tradition of several struggling identities in Turkey. [11] He opposed the authoritarian Government composed by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Devlet Bahceli, and claims a prominent role for the HDP in the quest for democracy in Turkey. [11]
On the 17 March 2021, the State Prosecutor at the Court of Cassations of Turkey Bekir Şahin filed a lawsuit before the Constitutional Court demanding for him and 686 other HDP politicians a five-year ban to engage in Turkish politics together with a closure of the HDP due to alleged organizational links with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). [13]