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Turkey's Kurdish Party warns legal
crackdown may rekindle war
21.3.2007
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March 21, 2007
Turkey, -- The leader of Turkey's main pro-
Kurdish party warned that the arrest of top party
officials during the past month may rekindle
separatist violence that has led to thousands of
deaths in the past two decades.
The crackdown could also cost Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, whose party holds a majority of
parliamentary seats in the largely Kurdish
southeast, support in elections later this year.
"If our party, which is committed to a peaceful
resolution, is unable to function, it says to Kurds
that the political arena is shut to them,'' said
Aysel Tugluk, co-chairman of the Democratic Society
Party or DTP. That may lead Kurdish guerrillas to
call off their seven-month unilateral truce as they
"assess how effective this cease-fire has been,''
she added.
A resumption of fighting could lead to tensions with
the European Union, which is calling on Turkey to
peacefully settle a two -decade long conflict with
Kurdish guerrillas that has left some 40,000 people
dead and large sections of the southeast desolate.
It may also cause friction with the United States,
which has close ties with Iraqi Kurds across the
border.
Turkish police have raided dozens of party offices
and detained about 100 officials and members since
mid-February, including top national leaders and
branch heads in several cities, said Tugluk, adding
that she can't keep count of the number of cases
pending against her and other party leaders. The
arrests come as Kurds mark the new-year festival of
Newroz today, a holiday that in the past has been
marred by violence and protests.
Officials Sentenced
Hundreds of people have been prosecuted since the
conflict began under Turkish anti-terrorism laws for
showing support for Kurdish nationalism or speaking
respectfully of Ocalan or his guerrillas. In Turkey
it was illegal to speak Kurdish until 1991. Turkey
says it will not negotiate with the guerrillas, who
it considers terrorists, and several pro-Kurdish
political parties that pre-date the DTP have been
closed by the courts.
Tugluk, 41, and her co-chairman, Ahmet Turk, 64,
were sentenced by an Ankara court to 1 1/2 years in
prison on Feb. 27 after party workers distributed
pamphlets in the Kurdish language. Turk was then
sentenced by a court in Diyarbakir, the largest
Kurdish city in the southeast, to another six months
for calling
Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the guerrilla
Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, "Mr. Ocalan''
The two are free pending an appeal to a higher
court.
A court on March 19
jailed Metin
Tekce, mayor of the city of Hakkari, to seven years
after he told a parliamentary commission that the
PKK was not a terrorist group and that he was proud
to be Kurdish.
Nationalist Sentiments
"This is a significant crackdown on the DTP,'' said
Wolfango Piccoli, a Turkey analyst with the Eurasia
Group in London. It ``makes it increasingly likely
that the PKK will resume attacks in the coming
weeks.''
Any rise in violence could lead to a nationalist
backlash and harm the prospects of Erdogan's Justice
and Development Party in a general election
scheduled for November.
"There is a strong nationalist wave in Turkey right
now, and if the PKK begins killing soldiers, this
will strengthen the right,'' Piccoli said.
Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat, a deputy chairman of
Erdogan's party, said the government has ``no
constitutional authority to intervene'' in the
probes. ``The judiciary in Turkey is independent.
These operations are being carried out by police
under orders from prosecutors,'' Firat said.
Kurdistan (Northern Iraq)
Turkish politicians have accused the DTP of
maintaining direct links with the rebels, a charge
that Tugluk denied. She said that members of her
party may have ``sympathy'' for the rebels and some
have relatives who fought with the guerrillas.
The crackdown comes as the snows in the mountainous
southeast begin to thaw, opening up mountain passes
that the guerrillas have often used to infiltrate
into Turkey from northern Iraq, where they are
based.
The army has deployed an additional 20,000 troops to
the border with Iraq, where it estimates 4,000 PKK
guerrillas are based, Vatan newspaper reported
yesterday.
Turkish generals have threatened to send forces into
northern Iraq, a warning that Gen. Ilker Basbug,
head of land forces repeated on March 9. That would
likely anger the United States, which considers
Kurdish-run northern Iraq one of the only stable
areas of that country.
The arrests may also be aimed at hurting Kurdish
chances at the ballot box, Tugluk said.
In the last election in 2002, the pro-Kurdish party
won enough votes to gain 54 seats in parliament if
it had passed the 10 percent nationwide threshold.
Since it dropped short of that, most of the seats
went to Erdogan's party.
Tugluk said her party may field independent
candidates in this year's election to run in
districts, circumventing the 10 percent rule, which
only applies to parties.
More than 30,000 Turkish soldiers and PKK guerrillas
have been killed since 1984 when the PKK took up
arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
bloomberg com
** 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
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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