KurdistanObserver.com
Turkey
Demands up to 15 Years' Imprisonment for 52 of Kurdish Mayors
April 3, 2007
The Associated Press
ANKARA, Turkey: A Turkish prosecutor on Tuesday asked a court to imprison more
than 50 Kurdish mayors for allegedly supporting a separatist Kurdish guerrilla
group by asking Denmark's prime minister to keep a Kurdish television station
on the air.
The prosecutor in his closing arguments asked the court in Diyarbakir, the
largest city in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast, to sentence 53 mayors to
up to 15 years each on charges of aiding and abetting a terrorist group. The
prosecutor asked the court to acquit three other mayors.
The court adjourned the trial until May 8 at the request of the defense.
The mayors have pleaded innocent and say that their letter was an act of "free
speech." The trial is seen as the latest test of freedom of speech in Turkey,
which has been under pressure from the European Union to strengthen the rights
of its Kurdish minority and eliminate limits on free speech.
The mayors, mostly from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party. were
indicted last year after writing a letter to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen asking him to keep the Roj TV station, which is banned in Turkey, on
the air in Denmark, despite claims by Turkey that it is a propaganda machine
of the rebel group Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK.
Rebel commanders often join the station's broadcasts by satellite telephone
from their mountain hideouts in northern Iraq, and the station broadcasts
images of rebels training or attacking Turkish soldiers.
The PKK has been listed by the European Union and the United States as a
terrorist organization.
