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Turkey arrests 70 over alleged ties to
Kurdish PKK rebels, KCK
22.11.2011 |
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November 22, 2011
ISTANBUL, — Turkish police arrested
more than 70 people in coordinated raids around the
country on Tuesday for suspected links to outlawed
Kurdish rebels, media reports said.
Lawyers for jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan
and some members of the pro-Kurdish Peace and
Democracy Party (BDP) were among those arrested,
security sources in the southeastern Kurdish
province of Diyarbakir said.
Police conducted simultaneous operations in 16
different provinces including Istanbul, Diyarbakir,
Ankara and Bursa, media reports said, while the
private news channel NTV said more than 70 people
had been arrested.
Police also raided the office of Ocalan's lawyers
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Lawyers for jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan
(on poster) were among those arrested, security
sources said. Photo: Shwan Mohammed/AFP |
in Istanbul, according to an AFP photographer at the
scene.
The suspects are accused of having links with the
Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), which Turkey
claims to be the urban wing of the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Those arrested include 47 of Ocalan's lawyers who
had visited him on the prison island of Imrali at
various times and are accused of transmitting his
orders to the PKK,www.ekurd.net
the Anatolia news agency said.
Since 2009, some 700 people have been arrested over
their alleged links to the KCK, according to
government figures, although the BDP puts the figure
at more than 3,500.
Five BDP parliamentarians and two prominent
intellectuals -- publisher Ragip Zarakolu and
academic Busra Ersanli -- are in custody on the same
charges.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier
this month that his government would not ease its
crackdown on the KCK, which Ankara claims wants to
replace Turkish government institutions in the
southeastern Anatolia region with its own political
structures.
Ocalan was jailed for life in 1999, but many Kurds
in Turkey still consider him their leader.
KCK-trial, on October 18, 2010 a Turkish
court began the trial
of 152 high profile Kurdish politicians and rights defenders,
accused of being the urban wing of the outlawed
separatist Kurdish PKK rebels.
Over
7748 people were taken into
custody and 3895 persons were
arrested in the scope of KCK operations during the past six months
[Till October 2011], the
pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party announced.
Dozens of BDP executives and employees are still in
prison.
Since it was established in 1984, the PKK has been
fighting the Turkish state, which still denies the
constitutional existence of Kurds, to establish a
Kurdish state in the south east of the country,
sparking a conflict that has claimed some 45,000
lives.
But now its aim is the creation an autonomous
Kurdish region
and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds who
constitute the greatest minority in Turkey,
numbering more than 20 million. A large Turkey's
Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK rebels.
PKK's demands included releasing PKK detainees,
lifting the ban on education in Kurdish, paving the
way for an autonomous democrat Kurdish system within
Turkey, reducing pressure on the detained PKK leader
Abdullah Öcalan, stopping military action against
the Kurdish party and recomposing the Turkish
constitution.
Turkey refuses to recognize its Kurdish population
as a distinct minority. It has allowed some cultural
rights such as limited broadcasts in the Kurdish
language and private Kurdish language courses with
the prodding of the European Union, but Kurdish
politicians say the measures fall short of their
expectations.
The PKK is considered as 'terrorist' organization by
Ankara, U.S., the PKK continues to be on the
blacklist list in EU despite court ruling which
overturned a decision
to place the Kurdish rebel group PKK and its
political wing on the European Union's terror list.
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author or news agency,
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