Workers' Party (PKK). In 1990, Perinçek was arrested and put in Diyarbakır Prison for three months after the issue of the Law of Censorship and Exile. In the 1990s he was involved with the founding of the short-lived Socialist Party and then the Workers' Party. He was the Workers' Party's leader from its foundation in 1992 until it was rebranded in 2015 as the Patriotic Party, which he has led since. In Turkey, on 21 March 2008, Perinçek was detained as part of an investigation into the alleged organization named Ergenekon. This followed the arrest and detention of 39 suspects in January 2008 during raids targeting Ergenekon. On 5 August 2013 Perinçek was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment. He was released on 10 March 2014 together with many other prisoners. Perinçek has spent a total of 15 years of his life in prison at different times. Since 2014, he has been an influential informal foreign policy adviser to the Turkish government. His influence on foreign policy has been significant. His foreign policy position seen as largely is anti-West and pro-China. Armenian genocide denial case In 2007, a ruling by a Swiss court made him the first person to receive a criminal conviction for denial of the Armenian genocide. He is a known denier of the Armenian genocide according to the Swiss-Armenian Association. The case was ultimately appealed to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, which in a 15 October 2015 judgment did not rule on the veracity of the Armenian genocide but ruled in favour of Perinçek on grounds of free speech. Perinçek is notable as being the first person to be convicted by a court of law for denial of the Armenian genocide. On 9 March 2007, he was found guilty by a Swiss district court of conscious violation of Swiss laws against genocide denial with a racist motivation and was fined CHF 12,000. The case was a result of Perinçek's description of the Armenian genocide as "an international lie" at a demonstration in Lausanne on 25 July 2005; he later clarified to a Swiss court that there had been massacres, but reiterated his belief that these did not constitute genocide. The verdict was confirmed by the Vaud cantonal appeal court on 19 June, and by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland on 12 December 2007. Perinçek announced he will take recourse to the European