Kurdish Rebel Leader Urges Brotherhood
TURKEY
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Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, whom a Turkish court had sentenced to hang, praised Turkey’s recent elimination of the death penalty and called on Kurds and Turks to live together as brothers, an Italian paper reported.
Prison authorities allowed La Repubblica to put questions to Ocalan in writing. He called the elimination of the death penalty “the most important decision in the history of the Turkish Republic,” the paper said, and he hailed reforms allowing wider use of the Kurdish language.
“Turks and Kurds must live together like a brotherly people,” he said. “Now an important task awaits the Kurds. They must not underestimate what’s been done.”
Ocalan was sentenced to death for treason in 1999.
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