Turkey cracks down on campaign for Kurdish-language education 

ANKARA, Jan 17 (AFP) - Turkey has rounded up more than 5,000 people and arrested about 300 in a crackdown against a campaign to have the Kurdish language taught at universities and schools, a pro-Kurdish party said Thursday.
"More than 5,000 people, including university students, parents and HADEP members, have been detained and 284 of them have been arrested," an official with the People's Democracy Party (HADEP) told AFP.

The campaign, seen by authorities as a sign of Kurdish separatism, started in Istanbul universities in November as hundreds of Kurdish students signed petitions asking for Kurdish language education, which is banned under Turkey's constitution.

The movement quickly spread to universities across the country and has recently spilled over to high schools, where parents have submitted similar petitions to the education ministry.

Authorities charged that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ankara accuses of terrorism, and which has waged a 15-year war for self-rule in southeast Turkey, was behind the campaign.

Interior Minister Rustu Kazim Yucelen said the movement was part of a recent PKK strategy of "civil disobedience", in a circular to governors across Turkey released on Thursday.

The PKK declared an end to its armed campaign in September 1999 to seek a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict following peace calls from its leader Abdullah Ocalan, on death row in Turkish jail.

Since then fighting in the southeast has significantly scaled down, but Ankara has downplayed PKK's peace overtures and the army continues to hunt down the rebels.

In his circular, Yucelen called for "cooperation between the education ministry and the security forces in dealing with the petition campaign, which is part of PKK's new action strategy."

Turkey, a European Union membership candidate with a troubled human rights record, has long been under pressure to grant its Kurds cultural freedoms.

But Ankara is reluctant to do so, fearing that such rights could encourage nationalist sentiment among the Kurds and rekindle separatist violence.

Yucelen said the "civil disobedience" movement also urged Kurds to use their mother tongue in classrooms, debates and conferences and to hang posters in Kurdish.

The PKK appeals are being conveyed to the people through "formations acting in parallel with the PKK," he said in a likely reference to pro-Kurdish non-governmental organizations, parties and media.

The HADEP official said his party was among institutions accused of organizing the campaign in line with PKK directives.

"This is not true, even though education in mother tongue is among the issues we favor," he said.

HADEP, which campaigns for Kurdish cultural freedoms, is already charged of of being linked to the PKK and faces the risk of being banned in a pending case at the constitutional court.

Shortly after the petition campaign started in November, Turkey's higher education board urged universities to either expel or suspend signatory students.

The board said the petitions were exactly the same as samples issued on nine internet websites affiliated with the PKK.

In October, Turkey passed a package of constitutional reforms to catch up with EU democracy standards, which paved the way for the country's Kurds to broadcast and publish material in their mother tongue.

But Kurdish-language education was left outside the scope of the package.