The Terrorist State Of Turkey
Sentences Top Kurdish Party Leaders to Prison
Turkish court sentences top Kurdish party
leaders to prison
The Associated Press
February 26, 2007
ANKARA, Turkey: A court
sentenced two prominent Kurdish politicians to a year and a half in prison each
in a ruling Monday that found them guilty of distributing party materials in the
Kurdish language and of praising a jailed rebel leader.
Ahmet Turk, president of the pro-Kurdish
Democratic Society Party, and Aysel Tugluk, the party's vice president, were
allowed to remain free pending an appeal.
The two were tried after a prosecutor said they
distributed pamphlets in Kurdish that allegedly praised imprisoned Kurdish rebel
leader Abdullah Ocalan at an International Women's Day event in 2006.
Political parties are not allowed to distribute
written materials in any language other than Turkish, according to Turkish law.
The court sentenced the men to one year each for that offense, and added six
months each for the separate offense of "praising crime or criminality."
The Democratic Society Party was founded in
2005 by a group of Kurdish activists, several of whom had spent a decade or more
in prison. Its members are frequently put on trial and the government regularly
accuses them of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.
The party has no representation in the
550-member Turkish parliament, but dozens of mayors in the Kurdish-majority
southeast are members.
