With an Eye on EU, Turkey Releases Four Kurd Activists

Four Kurdish activists were freed Wednesday and state-run television launched its first Kurdish broadcast, moves calculated to boost Turkey’s chances of launching membership talks with the European Union this year.

Hundreds of Kurds gathered outside Ankara’s Ulucanlar prison and broke out in piercing ululations, mobbing the four former lawmakers -- led by Leyla Zana, Turkey’s most prominent Kurdish female politician -- as they walked out to freedom. An appeals court Wednesday ordered them released pending a new trial.

“From now on we shall work for peace and continue our struggle for more rights, equality and justice,” said Selim Sadak, who with Zana, Orhan Dogan, and Hatip Dicle, was sentenced in 1994 to 15 years in prison on charges of belonging to an outlawed Kurdish separatist group. The evidence against Zana included her 1991 speech in Parliament in which she spoke in Kurdish, then banned, and said she would “work for peace between Turks and Kurds.”

Zana, 43, told reporters Wednesday that she believed Turkey could become “a garden of Eden” and “a regional star” as long as “this country resolves its internal problems.”

“We are turning a new page, a new era is beginning,” Zana said.

EU officials were quick to praise the developments.

“Today’s decision is a sign that implementation of political reforms, which Turkey has been introducing in the past two years, is gaining ground,” the EU’s commissioner for enlargement, Gunter Verheugen, said after the four were released.

Turkish Justice Minister, Cemil Cicek, said that the Zana case “was the last excuse left in the hands of those blocking Turkey’s membership.”

“The Turkish legal system has done its part, now the ball is in the others’ court.”

The former lawmakers’ convictions were upheld in April by a special state security court in April after the European Court of Human Rights ordered a retrial, saying they had been denied a free and fair trial. An Ankara court is expected to start hearing their cases July 8.

Earlier in the day, Kurds across the country tuned in to Turkish television’s first Kurdish program, an incongruous mix of news, folk tunes and short wildlife documentaries. “After denying the Kurds’ existence, their language for decades, with this broadcast the Turkish state is finally accepting that the Kurds do exist,” said Hasim Hasimi, a veteran Kurdish politician.

The four legislators had become a symbol of Ankara’s repression of its 12 million to 14 million Kurds, treatment cited by EU leaders in denying Turkey’s entry. But none of them caught the international public’s eye quite like Zana, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Zana’s first brush with Turkish officialdom came in 1980 when her husband, a prominent Kurdish politician, was arrested and sentenced to 30 years during the last military coup. She traveled from prison to prison to visit him and had to learn Turkish to communicate with him because Kurdish was banned until 1991.

In 1988, Zana was detained and tortured by police in her native city of Diyarbakir in the predominantly Kurdish southeast because of her advocacy of Kurdish rights.

“Half of me is happy, yet half of me is grieving for thousands who still unjustly remain in prison,” Zana said, before telling reporters she was too weary to answer any questions.

For all the day’s euphoria, many Kurds expressed concerns over last week’s call by the PKK -- the Kurdistan Workers Party -- to end the cease-fire declared after the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan in 1999. Rebel leaders based in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq have vowed to resume their 15-year battle against Turkish forces, because Turkey refuses to grant a full amnesty for all PKK fighters. Ankara has labeled them terrorists.

“Until these people are allowed to re-integrate into Turkish society, we cannot say Turkey’s Kurdish problem has been solved,” said Serafettin Elci, a conservative Kurdish politician.