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Prominent Kurdish politician stripped of parliamentary seat in Turkey
23.6.2011 |
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June
23, 2011
ANKARA, — Turkish authorities stripped a
prominent Kurdish activist of the parliamentary seat
he won in the June 12 polls, citing a terror-related
conviction, news agency reported.
Hatip Dicle, currently in jail awaiting trial in a
separate case, had been
expected to be freed
after he was elected to parliament as an independent
candidate from Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish city
in the southeast [Turkey Kurdistan].
The Higher Electoral Board however ruled late
Tuesday that Dicle was not eligible to stand in the
elections because of a 20-month jail sentence he had
received under Turkey’s anti-terror law.
The legal jumble arose from the fact that the
Appeals Court upheld Dicle’s sentence just four days
before the elections,www.ekurd.netwhen
the list of candidates had been confirmed.
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Turkey strips prominent Kurd, Hatip Dicle, of
parliamentary seat |
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Dicle was convicted over
a speech deemed ‘propaganda for an armed terrorist
organisation’ — a reference to the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has led a
bloody separatist insurgency in the southeast since
1984.
Dicle was among 36 candidates who were elected to
parliament with the backing of the Peace and
Democracy Party (BDP), Turkey’s main Kurdish
political movement which is seen as close to the PKK.
The BDP fielded them as independents to get around a
10-percent national threshold that parties are
required to pass to enter parliament.
Dicle, 57, was among the first Kurdish nationalists
to win seats in Turkey’s parliament in 1991.
However, many of them were arrested in 1994 after
their party was banned for links to the PKK, and
spent 10 years behind bars before being released in
2004.
The group included iconic Kurdish activist Leyla
Zana, who also won a parliamentary seat in the June
12 polls.
Dicle was put back in prison in 2010 as part of a
massive probe into alleged urban wings of the PKK,
which is listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and
much of the international community.
Since it was established in 1984, the Kurdistan
Workers' Party 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.
But now its aim is the creation an autonomous 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, AFP | ekurd.net | Agencies
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