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Turkey: Kurdish politician indicted for
'inciting hatred': prosecutor
17.3.2007
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March 17, 2007
DIYARBAKIR, Kurdish Southeastern region of
Turkey, -- , A Turkish prosecutor Friday indicted a
senior politician from the country's main Kurdish
party, demanding a jail sentence of up to three
years over remarks that allegedly threatened
violence, court officials said.
The charges against Hilmi Aydogdu, the provincial
chairman of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) in
Diyarbakir, came after the media quoted him as
saying late last month that Turkey's Kurds would
"consider a
Turkish attack on Kirkuk as an attack on Diyarbakir."
The indictment asked for up to three years in jail
for Aydogdu on charges of "openly inciting hatred"
on the basis of racial differences.
Aydogdu was jailed pending trial on February 23
during the course of the prosecutor's investigation.
His lawyer said he expected the trial to begin next
month. |
Hilmi Aydogdu, head of the mostly Kurdish Democratic
Society Party (DTP) in the southeastern Kurdish
province of Diyarbakir |
Turkey has issued harsh warnings over the future of
the ethnically mixed, oil-rich Kurdish city of
Kirkuk in northern Iraq, which the Iraqi Kurds want
to incorporate into their autonomous region.
The city is also home to Arabs and Turkish-backed
Turkmens.
Ankara is worried that Kurdish control of Kirkuk's
oil reserves will boost what it sees as Kurdish
aspirations to break away from Baghdad.
Kurdish independence, it fears, could further fuel a
bloody Kurdish insurgency led by the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in adjoining
southeast Turkey, which has already resulted in more
than 37,000 deaths.
Aydogdu's remarks provoked a harsh reaction here at
a time when Iraqi Kurds are accused of supporting
the PKK, whose militants have long taken refuge in
the mountains of the Kurdish autonomous region in
northern Iraq.
The DTP is frequently accused of supporting the PKK.
Several of its members have been prosecuted for
links with the group, which is blacklisted by
Ankara, the United States and the European Union.
AFP
**
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
about 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and
it is not under the full control of Kurdistan
Regional Government administration, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
Based on Iraq's Constitution a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be
annexed to the safe semiautonomous Kurdistan region
in Iraq's north.
** 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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