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Leading Kurdish politician risks new trial
in Turkey
28.6.2006
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DIYARBAKIR,
Kurdistan-Turkey, June 27, 2006 (AFP) , -- A leading
Kurdish politician risks a fresh trial in Turkey on
charges of collaborating with armed Kurdish rebels,
court sources said Tuesday.
Osman Baydemir, mayor of Diyarbakir, the largest
city of the mainly Kurdish southeast, and one of
Turkey's most popular Kurdish politicians, will
stand trial if a Diyarbakir court accepts an
indictment by a prosecutor seeking a 10-year jail
sentence.
The prosecution wants a new trial on charges that
Baydemir belongs to the separatist Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), blacklisted as a terrorist
group by the Turkish government, the European Union
and the United States.
Kurdish politicians in Turkey are routinely regarded
with suspicion and often seen as instruments of the
PKK in its campaign to give self-rule to the Kurds.
Baydemir belongs to the country's main Kurdish
party, the Democratic Society Party, which itself is
under judicial investigation for alleged links with
the rebels.
He has been under investigation since March when he
hailed the "courage" of young Kurdish rioters as he
tried to reason with them in a bid to end deadly
unrest in Diyarbakir that followed the killing of
several PKK rebels in clashes with government
security forces.
Baydemir said he shared the rioters' grief over the
slain rebels and urged them to end violence against
the government forces.
The authorities have accused the PKK of
orchestrating the riots, which spread from
Diyarbakir to other towns in the region and to
Istanbul, claiming a total of 16 lives.
Baydemir, 34, has been charged in two other cases,
with hearings expected to open soon in Diyarbakir.
In one, he risks up to 10 years in jail along with
55 fellow Kurdish mayors for allegedly supporting
the PKK.
The case was opened over a letter they wrote to
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, urging
him to ignore the Turkish-government's calls to ban
a Denmark-based Kurdish television station, which
Turkish officials accuse of being a PKK mouthpiece
inciting to violence.
In the second case, Baydemir risks one year in jail
for allegedly allocating a public ambulance to
transport the body of a slain PKK militant.
The PKK has been fighting for Kurdish self-rule in
the southeast since 1984, in a conflict that has
claimed more than 37,000 lives.
AFP
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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