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Turkey: Kurdish party leaders risk jail
over leaflet
7.7.2006
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ANKARA, July 6,
2006 (AFP) , -- A Turkish prosecutor has asked for
two-and-a-half-years in jail each for two leading
members of the country's main Kurdish party over a
leaflet to mark Women's Day on March 8, the Anatolia
news agency reported.
The indictment charged Ahmet Turk, the chairman of
the Democratic Society Party (DTP), and his former
co-chairwoman, Aysel Tugluk, with "praising crime or
criminals" after Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah
Ocalan, serving a life sentence for treason, was
mentioned in the leaflet.
It also accused the two politicians of violating the
law on political parties because the leaflet in
question was in Kurdish.
Even though Turkey has somewhat relaxed strict
restrictions on the use of Kurdish in recent years,
the law states that Turkish is the only language to
be used by political parties in their writings and
functions.
It was not immediately clear when the trial would
begin.
Kurdish politicians in Turkey are routinely regarded
with suspicion and often seen as instruments of
Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has
been fighting a bloody campaign against the Ankara
government since 1984 to give self-rule to the
Kurds.
The DTP was set up in November with a pledge to try
to resolve the Kurdish conflict through peaceful
means, but it has so far failed to acheive any
progress, with PKK violence mounting in the
southeast.
It has come under fire for sympathizing with the PKK,
which is blacklisted as a terror group by Turkey,
the European Union and the United States, and dozens
of its members face prosecution for supporting the
rebels.
Last month, a Turkish prosecutor launched an
investigation into whether the DTP's first
convention amounted to propaganda for the PKK after
participants waved Kurdish flags and brandished
posters of Ocalan.
AFP
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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