ISTANBUL - A maxi-amnesty for 90,000 prisoners was approved Monday night in the Turkish Parliament to reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus in overcrowded prisons.



The measure releases or places on house arrest nearly a third of the total number of prisoners, but excludes opponents of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.



The text of the measure was presented by Erdogan's AKP party and its nationalist allies in the MHP party and was approved with 290 votes in favour, 51 against.



It reduces sentences for those convicted of many minor crimes, pregnant women, mothers of young children, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses.



The measure is not applicable to those with convictions for terrorism, drugs, violence against women and children, sex crimes, and first-degree murder.



Various NGOs, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have denounced the exclusion of prominent dissidents from the amnesty measure, including Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas, who suffers from problems of high blood pressure; the 70-year-old writer Ahmet Altan; and the philanthropist Osman Kavala.



A total of 17 prisoners in Turkish prisons have become infected with Covid-19, of whom one is in intensive care.



There are currently 61,000 cases of Covid-19 in the country and 1,296 people have died of the virus.