13 Get Prison Terms as Turkey Toughens Stance Toward Kurds

In a shift away from the government’s recent softer line toward Turkey’s Kurdish minority, 13 members of the country’s largest pro-Kurdish party were sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for staging a hunger strike in support of jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Hours earlier, three prominent mayors from the same group, the People’s Democracy Party, or Hadep, were formally charged with aiding and abetting Ocalan’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. The mayor of Diyarbakir, the country’s largest Kurdish city, was among those arrested.

“The hawks within the power establishment appear to be gaining the upper hand,” said Mustafa Ozer, a lawyer for the Hadep officials. “These are people who stand to lose power, influence and privilege if peace is achieved in the southeast,” he said in a telephone interview.

Some analysts here believe that the crackdown is being supported by hard-liners in Turkey’s influential armed forces who feel that granting the Kurds more rights would inevitably lead to the breakup of the Turkish state.

Lawyers for the trio, who were detained after weekend raids, say their clients weren’t allowed to sleep during four days of questioning at police headquarters in Diyarbakir.

“From a legal point of view, it is very disturbing, to say the least, that democratically elected representatives should be interrogated under detention,” said Yucel Sayman, president of the Istanbul Bar Assn.

Ocalan called off his armed fight for an independent Kurdish state after being sentenced to death last year on treason charges. Seeking to transform himself into a peacemaker, Ocalan has repeatedly offered “to serve the Turkish state,” prompting accusations from critics that he had “sold out the Kurds to save his own skin.”

In the wake of violent clashes Tuesday between police and demonstrators in Diyarbakir and Siirt, both in the southeastern region, Ocalan urged his people to remain calm in comments published in the pro-Kurdish daily Ozgur Bakis.

Turkey’s coalition government, led by left-of-center Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, has agreed to postpone Ocalan’s execution pending review of his case by the French-based European Court, which could take two years.

The move was widely welcomed by European governments as a sign that Turkey is finally prepared to reach a political accommodation with its restive Kurdish minority. More than 30,000 people have died since the PKK launched its bloody insurgency in 1984. Clashes between the rebels and the army have all but stopped since Ocalan’s unilateral cease-fire.

Turkey’s continued rejection of the Kurds’ demands for greater rights was long held out by European Union members as the main reason for denying the country entry. But at their December summit in Helsinki, Finland, EU leaders named Turkey as an official candidate for membership.

“We realized that dialogue rather than confrontation was the most sensible way to help strengthen Turkey’s democracy,” a senior European diplomat said.

But tensions between Turkey and the EU resurfaced after the mayors’ arrests. After the European Parliament and the Council of Europe called on the government in Ankara for the immediate release of the mayors, Turkish President Suleyman Demirel said the detentions had “nothing to do with the EU.”