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Kurdish mayor jailed in Turkey for 'praising' rebel
leader
10.6.2006
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DIYARBAKIR,
Kurdistan-Turkey, June 9, 2006 (AFP) , -- A Kurdish
mayor in southeastern Turkey was sentenced to 15
months in jail Friday for remarks deemed as praise
of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Aydin Budak, the mayor of Cizre town in the province
of Sirnak, told AFP by telephone that the court
found him guilty of "praising a criminal offender."
He said he would appeal against the sentence.
The case against Budak was launched after a speech
he made in Cizre last year, in which he condemned
Ocalan's solitary confinement on the prison island
of Imrali in northwestern Turkey and criticized the
authorities for restricting visits by his family.
Ocalan is the leader of the separatist Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), which has fought for Kurdish
self-rule in the southeast since 1984, in a conflict
that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
Kurdish politicians in Turkey are traditionally
suspected of backing the PKK, blacklisted as a
terrorist group by Ankara, the European Union and
the United States, and are often prosecuted for
remarks deemed as a show of support for the group.
Budak belongs to the main Kurdish political party in
Turkey, the Democratic Society Party.
Reuters, The court handed down the sentence
to Aydin Budak, mayor of Cizre near the border with
Iraq, saying he had carried out propaganda for the
outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
with comments broadcast on Denmark-based Kurdish Roj
TV.
If a court of appeal upholds the ruling, he will go
to jail and lose his post. No further details about
what he said were immediately available.
Budak is a member of the Democratic Society Party
(DTP), which favours more autonomy and cultural
rights for Turkey's Kurdish minority.
But Ankara suspects it of having separatist
ambitions and ties with militants, who launched a
guerrilla campaign for an independent homeland in
1984.
Turkish media, linking the station to separatist
guerrilla violence that has killed over 30,000
people since 1984, have compared Roj TV to an al
Qaeda channel.
The United States, the European Union and Ankara
regard the PKK as a terrorist organisation.
Last year, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan
boycotted a joint news conference with the Danish
prime minister because a journalist from Roj TV was
present.
Turkey is under pressure from the European Union,
which it hopes to join, to improve the cultural
rights of its ethnic minorities, especially the 12
million Kurds who until the 1990s were banned from
using their language in public.
AFP | Reuters
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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