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Turkey: Pro-Kurdish DTP party presents
defense, warns of civil war
12.2.2008
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February 12, 2008
Ankara, -- On February 11, the pro-Kurdish
Democratic Society Party (DPT) presented its initial
defense in the case brought before the Turkish
Constitutional Court calling for its closure. In its
concluding arguments, the DPT warned that, by
regarding the Kurdish issue as one of terrorism and
using military means to try to suppress it, the
Turkish authorities were dragging the country toward
a civil war.
On November 16, 2007, Public Prosecutor Abdurrahman
Yalcinkaya formally applied to the Turkish
Constitutional Court for the closure of the DTP on
the grounds that it had become a "center of
activities aimed at damaging the independence of the
state and the indivisible integrity of its territory
and nation" (see EDM, November 19, 2007). Now that
the DTP has presented its initial defense,
Yalcinkaya will submit his case for the party’s
closure. The DTP will have the right to respond,
after which a rapporteur will prepare a report that
will be distributed to the 11 members of the
Constitutional Court. If seven members of the court
find in favor of Yalcinkaya, the DTP will be closed
down and all of its assets transferred to the
Turkish Treasury. The Constitutional Court is not
expected to reach a verdict before fall this year.
The case against the DTP is the sixth against a
pro-Kurdish political party in the last 15 years.
The fifth case is still ongoing. The previous four
all resulted in the court ruling to close the party
concerned. Traditionally, the members of each
outlawed party have simply formed a replacement
under a different name. However, in addition to the
financial losses resulting from the confiscation of
the banned party’s assets,www.ekurd.net
the establishment of a
new party is very time-consuming, not least because
under Turkish law a party must be registered in each
of the country’s 81 provinces before being allowed
to participate in nationwide elections.
One of the main charges leveled at all of the
pro-Kurdish parties formed over the last 15 years
has been that they are affiliated with or are
sympathetic toward the Turkey-Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK), which has been waging an often brutal
insurgency since 1984. Even if there are no organic
links between the DTP and the PKK, no one doubts
that the charges have at least a degree of
justification. Turkish intelligence officials insist
that the DTP’s network of branch offices remains one
of the main conduits through which young PKK
sympathizers are able to join the militants in the
mountains of southeast Turkey and northern Iraq. On
February 5-6, the DTP staged a series of protests
against Turkish military operations against PKK
units in Turkey and the organization’s main camps in
the Qandil Mountains of Kurdistan region 'northern
Iraq' (see EDM, February 5). The protests culminated
in an overnight vigil on Turkey’s border with Iraq
where DTP supporters chanted pro-PKK slogans and
waved photographs of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah
Ocalan (Aksam, Hurriyet, February 6).
One of the charges against the DTP is that Ocalan
gave orders to establish the party during his weekly
meetings in jail with his lawyers. It is an open
secret that both the authorities and Ocalan’s
lawyers record the meetings. In fact, until
relatively recently, sources close to his lawyers
posted transcripts of the conversations on the
Internet. The transcripts clearly showed that the
lawyers were often used by Ocalan to send messages
to the PKK in the mountains, albeit expressions of
solidarity and broad strategic suggestions rather
than detailed instructions. In its initial defense,www.ekurd.net
the DTP called on the
Turkish authorities to provide the Constitutional
Court with the transcripts of Ocalan’s conversations
with his lawyers to prove that he was not
controlling the DPT (Radikal, Vatan, Milliyet,
February 12).
The DPT also claimed that the application for the
party’s closure was politically motivated and that
the authorities were using the PKK as a pretext to
deny the existence of the Kurdish problem. “The
Kurds are the second largest people after the
Turks,” said the DPT in its defense. “They number
more than 20 million. The Kurdish people are a
different community to the Turkish people in terms
of their history, language, and geographical
location. That is to say, they are an independent
people” (Radikal, February 12).
Even more controversially, the DPT’s defense also
implicitly challenged the characterization of the
PKK as a terrorist organization by noting that there
was no internationally accepted definition of
terrorism. It attacked those who criticized the
party for its refusal to distance itself from the
PKK by describing it as a terrorist organization.
“No one can force us to express our thoughts and
opinions on any subject,” declared the DPT’s defense
(Radikal, February 12).
In recent weeks, the DPT has also stepped its calls
for lifting of the legal restrictions on a candid
discussion of the Kurdish issue, bitterly noting
that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
repeatedly described the government’s efforts to
lift the headscarf ban in universities in terms of
freedom of expression, while refusing to extend such
freedoms to Kurdish nationalists. Many DTP members
have been particularly infuriated by Erdogan’s
descriptions of the Kurds as “brothers” and his
calls for them to live in peace and harmony in a
unitary Turkish state with Turkish as the sole
official language.
“The prime minister calls us his brothers and
sisters. But there is no difference between his
notion of us being brothers and sisters and the
concept of a single nation with a single language,”
complained Aysel Tugluk, a DTP member of parliament
from the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir.
“We don’t want such ‘brotherhood.’ It will only be
possible to find a solution to the problem of the
Kurds living together [with Turks] within the system
if we can also discuss a Kurdish federation or
separation. This is the most natural of rights” (Milliyet,
February 10).
Over 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish 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. A large Turkey's
Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish
PKK rebels.
The PKK demanded Turkey's recognition of the Kurds'
identity in its constitution and of their language
as a native language along with Turkish in the
country's Kurdish areas, the party also demanded an
end to ethnic discrimination in Turkish laws and
constitution against Kurds, granting them full
political freedoms.
jamestown org | Agencies
**
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, a
large Turkey's Kurdish community 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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