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Leyla Zana freed!
August 22, 2004
ANKARA : Turkey freed four jailed Kurdish politicians, including leading human rights activist Leyla Zana in a surprise move likely to boost Ankara’s EU credentials and help it improve relations with its restive Kurdish minority.
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The release of the four activists, in prison for a decade, coincided with another landmark move—the inauguration of Kurdish-language broadcasts on state radio and television earlier in the day.
The European Union welcomed the release of Zana, Hatip Dicle, Selim Sadak and Orhan Dogan, jailed for collaborating with separatist Kurdish rebels, as proof that EU-oriented reforms were paying off in Turkey.
“Today’s decision is a sign that the implementation of political reforms, which Turkey has been introducing in the past two years, is gaining ground,” EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said.
The EU and international rights campaigners have seen the four activists as prisoners of conscience.
Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek declared that, “Those who are looking for pretexts against Turkey’s EU membership have been stripped of their last trump card.”
Turkey is hoping that EU leaders will give a positive review of its democratization process and set a date for the start of accession talks with the Muslim nation when they take up the issue in December.
The European Commission is due to publish a progress report on Turkey in October which will serve as the basis for the EU leaders’ decision in December.
Turkey’s appeals court ordered the release of the four Kurdish activists, pending the outcome of an appeal lodged against their 1994 convictions, which were confirmed in a retrial in April.
Zana, winner of the European Parliament’s 1995 Sakharov prize, and her co-defendants—all MPs from the now-defunct pro-Kurdish Democracy Party—were sentenced for membership of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The European Court of Human Rights condemned the convictions in 2001.
The sentences have been widely seen as a political settling of scores at a time when tensions between Ankara and its Kurdish minority were at their peak, with the PKK waging a bloody campaign for self-rule in the southeast.
The retrial of the four was made possible by EU-inspired democracy reforms adopted by the Turkish parliament. But the confirmation of the sentences triggered a warning by Brussels that Turkey’s EU aspirations might suffer.
The defense had accused the court of favoring the prosecution and disregarding witnesses testifying in favor of the defendants.
Witnesses for the prosecution had said the four aided PKK militants and made speeches in Kurdish villages encouraging locals to join the PKK and fight for an independent Kurdish state.
Zana, 43, the first Kurdish woman to win a seat in Turkey’s parliament, has been upheld by international rights campaigners as a symbol of peaceful advocacy of Kurdish freedoms.
She caused uproar in the parliament in 1991 when after taking her oath in Turkish, the official language, she vowed in Kurdish to “struggle so that the Kurdish and Turkish people may live peacefully together.”
Her release coincided with the first broadcasts in a Kurdish language on Turkey’s state-run television and radio, a turning point for a country where the Kurdish language was banned less than 15 years ago.
An elated crowd of supporters, relatives and fellow politicians greeted the four outside the Ulucanlar prison in Ankara, chanting “The Kurdish people are proud of you” and hurling flowers.
They had trouble walking to their cars, with Zana stumbling and almost escaping a stampede.
An equally festive atmosphere gripped Diyarbakir, the main city of the mainly Kurdish southeast, from where Zana hails.
“June 9 is an important day in the advancement of the democracy movement in Turkey… These steps will help the peaceful resolution of the Kurdish question,” Diyarbakir mayor Osman Baydemir said.
Turkey had long resisted Kurdish demands for cultural and political freedoms, fearing that such rights could fuel nationalist sentiment among the minority and constitute a reward for the PKK.
The group, now known as KONGRA-GEL, said last week that it was ending a five-year unilateral truce as of June 1, raising fears of renewed bloodshed in the southeast, which has enjoyed a relative calm in recent years.
The Kurdish conflict has claimed some 37,000 lives.
- AFP