Turkey to Release 2 Kurdish Lawmakers : Human rights: Government is enacting reforms in hopes of winning a trade pact with Europe.

This nation’s Supreme Court ordered the release of two jailed Kurdish members of Parliament on Thursday as the government emerged from five weeks of crisis and began to enact human rights reforms sought by Europe in return for a landmark trade pact.

“It’s a good, if limited, sign,” said Alexander Borges, spokesman for the European Commission in Turkey. “The position of the commission is that . . . this is the best way to help democracy in Turkey.”

The ruling to free Ahmet Turk and Sedat Yurtdas came as conservative Prime Minister Tansu Ciller tried to tie up the loose ends of her plans to form a coalition government with Turkey’s Social Democrats before Nov. 5.

Ciller on Thursday settled a five-week strike by up to half of Turkey’s 600,000 public sector workers, and Parliament early today approved her proposal to reschedule parliamentary elections for Dec. 24, instead of waiting to hold them next October.

But one European legislator said the Turkish Establishment was probably not moving far or fast enough to persuade her colleagues to ratify a key customs union deal in December that would expand the already substantial commerce between Europe and Turkey, a mostly Muslim nation of 65 million and a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally.

“We didn’t expect a mere face lift just to get this treaty signed,” said Claudia Roth, leader of the Greens in the European Parliament. “When we said we supported customs union with Turkey, we stressed that there should be full freedom of thought in the country.”

Turkey arrested eight Kurdish nationalist members of Parliament in March, 1994, and, despite an international outcry, charged them with aiding the Kurdistan Workers Party, a Syrian-based, Marxist guerrilla army fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey.

The Supreme Court said that, while Turk and Yurtdas should be freed, they should be retried under a controversial article of an anti-terrorism law that penalizes activists with jail terms of up to five years for any “written or verbal propaganda that aims to split the indivisible unity of the Turkish Republic.” Two other Kurdish leaders, freed in 1994, would also be retried, the court said.

“It’s all political,” said Mahmut Alinak, the only one of the eight who has regained his parliamentary seat. “My original conviction was based on fabrications by policemen and informers. It’s all just some makeup to look good for Europe.”

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The court did not change the sentences of the others originally arrested, who include a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. They had been given 15 years in jail on more serious charges.

Ciller, despite being buffeted by severe political crisis since her last coalition government collapsed Sept. 20, is working to change the controversial article of the anti-terrorism law, which the European Parliament has said contradicts democracy. A new version passed a Turkish Parliament commission on Wednesday. It reduces penalties to one to three years, defines “propaganda” less broadly and allows sentences to be suspended or converted to fines.