Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Baszn Özeti
oj
Kurdish rights advocates
,freed from Turkish prison
Reuters
ANKARA: A former Nobel peace
prize nominee, Leyla Zana, and three
other Kurdish human rights advocates
,were (reed from a Turkish jail on Wednesday.
The move brought praise from the
European Union, which had wa,rned
that their detention could damage Turkey's
effort to attain EU membership.
The four former lawmakers had
served 10'years of their IS-year sentences
for links to Kurdish rebel guerrillas.
They were mobbed by hundreds of ecstatic
supporters singing, dancing, waving
Kurdish flags and hurling flowers.
Zana, diminutive and bespectacled, was
'briefly knocked to the ground in the
melee before being driven away.
A ruling by Turkey's appeals court to
free them pending appeal, coincided
with the inauguration of Kurdish-language
broadcasts on state television,
and the start of an appeal at the European
Court ofHuman Rights on the fate
of a jailed Kurdish rebel chief, Abdullah
Ocalan.
"Turkey's BO-yearban on the Kurds is
over today," Sirri Sakik, another former
Kurdish lawmaker, said outside Ankara's
Ulucanlar prison before the release
,of the four prisoners.
Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah
GuI, said it was unlikely that the four
would serve further time in prison, even
if they were found guilty in a retrial
He said their release had been a result
of far-reaching' political reforms by
Tur~ey aimed at winning a starting
date for European Union membership ,
talks.
EU's' enlargement commissioner,
Günter Verheugen, said in a statement: '
"Today's decision is a sign that the implementation
of political reforms,
which lUrkey has been introducing in
the past two years, is gaining ground."
"The commission trusts that the futUre
sessions of the trial of Zana and her
colleague!ï.will be conducted in accordance
with the basic provisions on fair tri- '
al and that the verdict of any future trial
will reflect these prinCiples," he said.
Zana has great symbolic importance,
both for supporters and for those who
see her as a threat to Turkish unity.
For decades Turkey denied the very
existence of its Kurdish minority, terming
them "mountain Turks." Courts
punished public expressions of Kurdish:
identity, especially after the outbreak of'
armed separatism in 19B4.
Kurds form an estimated 12million of
Turkey's 70 million population.
'
The EU and human rights groups have
considered the four - Zana, Hatip Diele,
'~elim Sadak and Orhan Dogan - pris-
6Qers of conscience. They were jailed in
1~ afteibeing stripped of their parliamentary
immunity and convicted of
having ties to Kurdish guerrillas.
"Their verdict has not been overturned.
But taking into account their
long imprisonment, a decision was made
,for their release, pending the end of the
investigation," a court official said.
The 1994 conviction was upheld by a
state security court in April after a retrial
ordered by the European Court of
Human Rights, which said Zana and the
others had been denied a fair trial.
Last month, the government abolished
'the controversial state security
courts in which the four had been tried.