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Turkish authorities seek to ban Kurdish
DTP party
16.11.2007
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November 16, 2007
ANKARA, -- Turkish prosecutors on Friday
started legal action to ban the main Kurd political
DTP party in Turkey, which has been accused of
colluding with Turkey's Kurdish PKK rebels.
The action against the Democratic Society Party
(DTP) by Supreme Court prosecutors came amid
heightened tensions with Iraq caused by Turkey's
threat to launch cross border attacks on Kurdish
guerrilla bases.
Prosecutors have asked the Constitutional Court to
ban the DTP, according to court documents.
"The party in question has become a base for
activities which aim at the independence of the
state and its indivisible unity," through its links
to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), said chief
prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya in a statement to
the court. |
Turkey's pro-Kurdish DTP party |
The DTP was founded in 2005 after another pro-Kurd
party was ordered to disband because of alleged
links to the outlawed PKK.
DTP deputy Sirri Sakik, a militant Kurd activist,
said the action by the authorities "is a step
backwards in the country's democratic process as
well as the process of integration with the European
Union." www.ekurd.net
"Turkey is becoming a cemetery of banned political
parties. Closing a group does not resolve the
problem," he told AFP.
The Kurdish problem has returned to the
international spotlight in recent weeks after the
Turkish parliament approved cross -border strikes on
PKK bases in Kurdistan region 'northern Iraq'.
Turkey has massed 100,000 troops on the border and
scores of PKK rebels have been reported killed in
clashes in recent weeks in Turkish territory.
A series of Kurdish parties have been banned in
recent years. The best known has been the Democratic
Party. Four party lawmakers spent 10 years in jail
up to 2004 because of alleged links to the PKK. One
of them, Leyla Zana, was given the European
parliament's Sakharov human rights award while in
prison.
Pro-Kurdish parties have never, in their own right,
got past the 10 percent of the vote needed to secure
seats in parliament.
About 20 pro-Kurdish candidates who stood as
independents in the national election in July
grouped together in parliament under the DTP banner.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won
an overwhelming share of seats from the main Kurdish
regions of southeast Turkey in the election.
The party has been accused by the government,
opposition and army and the Turkish media of being
the political wing of the PKK, which has been
fighting the Turkish army since 1984 and is labelled
a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United
States and other countries.
The DTP's new leader, Nurettin Demirtas, has spent
more than 10 years in jail for belonging to the PKK.
Another deputy, Sabahat Tuncel, is on trial --
despite his parliamentary immunity -- for alleged
support for the PKK while the husband of another
deputy, Fatma Kurtulan, is a PKK fighter. www.ekurd.net
Nationalist deputies have demanded that the
government end the immunity from prosecution for DTP
lawmakers but even Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan has opposed this.
Senior prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya has been
working for the past year on a case against the DTP,
which held a congress in Ankara last week to elect a
leadership.
The legal procedure against the DTP is expected to
take several months.
Since 1984 the PKK took up arms for self-rule in the
country's mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
AFP
**
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
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