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Turkey: Kurdish party warns Ocalan
poisoning claims may spark violence
3.3.2007
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March 3, 2007
ANKARA, -- Turkey's Kurds may respond with
violence if jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan's
life
is really in danger, the country's main Kurdish
party warned Friday following claims that Ocalan is
being progressively poisoned in prison.
"If the allegations are true, it means that a
planned murder is being consciously committed,"
Aysel Tugluk, deputy chairwoman of the Democratic
Society Party (DTP), told reporters here.
"Ocalan wields influence over the Kurdish people,"
she said. "If something bad happens, those who
sympathise with him will react... Turkey will be
faced with very serious dangers."
Tugluk argued that "some people may be planning a
Turkish-Kurdish (civil) war" and urged Ankara to
allow an independent medical commission to examine
Ocalan's health and the poisoning claims, made by
Ocalan's lawyers at a press conference in Rome
Thursday. |
Jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. The only
prisoner on the Imrali Island in the Turkish Sea of
Marmara. photo from ROJ TV |
The lawyers said
laboratory tests on hair samples from Ocalan, 58,
indicated the presence of what they described as
toxic metals, including levels of chromium seven
times higher than normal and high levels of
strontium.
Ocalan, who led a bloody separatist rebellion in
southeast Turkey from 1984 until his capture in
1999, is experiencing breathing and skin problems as
well as severe pain which is interrupting his sleep,
they said.
The justice ministry ordered an investigation into
the allegations, even though it played them down as
an attempt to revive international interest in
Ocalan.
In February last year, Italian lawyers of the rebel
chieftain said he was in serious condition after
suffering a heart attack. Turkey denied the claim.
Ocalan is the sole inmate on the prison island of
Imrali in northwestern Turkey, where he is serving a
life sentence for treason and separatism.
Council of Europe officials, who have several times
visited Ocalan, have found his jail conditions
satisfactory, but have urged Ankara to ease his
isolation.
Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is listed as
a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the
international community, but to many among Turkey's
sizeable Kurdish minority its militants are freedom
fighters.
The PKK campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the
southeast has resulted in more than 37,000 deaths.
AFP
** 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 as many as 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 some 20 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
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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