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Diyarbakir mayor Osman Baydemir, Dicle appear on
Kurdish ROJ TV angering Turks
10.7.2007 |
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July
10, 2007
The mayor of Turkey's southeastern Kurdish
provincial capital of Diyarbakir Osman Baydemir and
prominent Kurdish politician Hatip Dicle appeared on
Kurdish ROJ TV once again preparing the scene for a
new controversy.
Baydemir called the PKK "Kurdish armed opposition."
Baydemir also accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan of being inconsistent.
Dicle who is a former parliamentarian who was
expelled from the house and sent to jail for ten
years on charges of his links with the PKK said
independent Kurdish deputies will enter the
Parliament after the July 22 elections and will work
for a "demoratic solution (of the Kurdish problem)."
Dicle said he and other Kurdish deputies had entered
the Parliament in 1991 and had cleared the way for
the current deputies to struggle for their rights.
"They have a huge crowd behind them (Kurds of
Turkey).
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Osman Baydemir, mayor of the Kurdish city of
Diyarbakir |
We were like the donkeys sent to the minefield. We
cleared the mines (by ending up in prison) and today
the new deputies will now have an easier time
opening up the fields for cultivation. They are
facing a historical task."
Dicle said the people were concerned as they heard
the slogans in mass rallies say "we are all Turks,
we are Kamalists."
Besides Baydemir former Human Rights Association
chief Yusuf Akatas and Prof. Cengiz Gulec also
participated in the program. PKK rebel group
European official Murat Karasu also participated in
the program by phone.
Turkey has repeatedly called on Denmark to ban ROJ
TV. The issue of closing ROJ-TV in 2006 created a
diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Denmark. Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan boycotted a news
conference with the Danish prime minister in
Copenhagen to protest the presence of Roj-TV
journalists there.
The PKK is considered a terrorist group by both the
European Union and the U.S.
However Danish police have been investigating
whether ROJ-TV has any ties with the PKK, something
the station has repeatedly denied.
In 1995 a political wing of the PKK opened its
fourth European office in Copenhagen, sparking
protests from the Turkish Embassy. The office later
closed because of a lack of funding. In 2000 Turkey
protested that a Kurdish-language satellite TV
station, Mesopotamia TV, which also has ties with
the PKK, was allowed to broadcast from Denmark to
Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Baydemir was put on trial when he previously
defended ROJ TV. He was one of the fifty-six
pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) mayors
who wrote to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen last year asking him to keep ROJ-TV on the
air.
The mayors, including Baydemir, faced charges of
"aiding and abetting a terrorist group."
thenewanatolian 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.
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.
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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