Tag: Hatip Dicle

By MARC CHAMPION

ISTANBUL—A decision to bar an elected Kurdish candidate from Turkey’s Parliament triggered protests and warnings of “chaos” from a top Kurdish politician on Wednesday.

Turkey’s High Election Board ruled late Tuesday that Hatip Dicle, one of 36 Kurdish-backed candidates to win a seat in elections June 12, wouldn’t be allowed to enter Parliament because of a prior conviction for spreading terrorist propaganda.

The election board and courts are still deciding whether to release from jail nine elected candidates, including Mr. Dicle and five backed by the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP, so they can take their seats in Parliament. The three non-BDP candidates—a former university rector, a journalist and a retired general—are awaiting trial on charges of taking part in terrorist conspiracies to bring down the government.

Under Turkish law, anyone convicted of a terrorism-related charge can’t enter Parliament. Mr. Dicle lost an appeal against his 2010 conviction earlier this month. However, Kurds and many human-rights lawyers argue that Turkish terrorism laws are unduly broad.

The decision to bar Mr. Dicle raised tensions in Turkey’s large ethnic Kurdish minority, after an election campaign that featured attacks by Kurdish terrorists and a toughened stance from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan toward Kurdish demands for greater language and political rights as he sought nationalist votes.

“This decision has openly shown what the state’s real approach and understanding of a solution to the Kurdish problem is,” Ahmet Turk, a former Kurdish party leader elected to parliament on a ticket backed by the BDP, said in televised remarks Wednesday. “This is a decision that will draw Turkey into chaos.”

Two policemen were killed in an explosion Wednesday while driving in the Eastern province of Tunceli, the state-run Anadolu Ajansi reported. No group had claimed responsibility for the attack by afternoon. The banned Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, is active in the area.

A sit-in was held in the main Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Wednesday to protest the decision to bar Mr. Dicle, the Firat news agency reported. A Facebook campaign was under way to organize a demonstration in Istanbul in the evening.

Mr. Erdogan began an initiative during his last term in office aimed at resolving Turkey’s long-running Kurdish problem. A war between Turkish security forces and the PKK that started in 1984 has claimed up to 40,000 lives. There was widespread disappointment among Kurds as Mr. Erdogan appeared to backpedal on the initiative in the face of nationalist opposition within Turkey.

The government is expected to make resolving the Kurdish issue a high priority in its new term, amid reports Mr. Erdogan will create a cabinet-level portfolio to deal with the issue. Analysts say unrest in Syria, which borders Turkey’s Kurdish regions, has increased the urgency of resolving the Kurdish problem.

If Mr. Dicle remains barred from Parliament, the runner-up for his seat in Diyarbakir, who is from Mr. Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, would take his place.

Prior to the June 12 elections, the election board announced it was barring seven Kurdish candidates from running, but then reversed under pressure its decision on six of them.

Mr. Turk had warned that all 36 Kurdish-backed candidates would boycott the new 550-seat Parliament if Mr. Dicle wasn’t reinstated. But Altan Tan, also elected on a BDP-backed ticket in Diyarbakir, said in a phone interview that no formal decision had been made and a discussion was expected on “the pros and cons, and the consequences” of a boycott.

—Ayla Albayrak contributed to this article.

via Ban on Kurdish Lawmaker Sparks Protests – WSJ.com.

AFP/Diyarbakir, Turkey

Newly-elected Kurdish lawmakers came under pressure yesterday to boycott Turkey’s parliament after one of them lost his seat, as Ankara faced warnings of renewed bloodshed.

Some 2,000 Kurds launched a sit-in in Diyarbakir, the largest city of the Kurdish-majority southeast, furious with an electoral board decision to strip veteran activist Hatip Dicle of the parliamentary seat he won in the June 12 polls over a terror-related conviction.

Dicle, in jail since 2010 on separate charges, had been expected to be freed to assume his seat.

The Democratic Society Congress (DTK), a Kurdish umbrella organisation, appealed to the other 35 Kurdish-backed lawmakers elected along with Dicle to boycott parliament when it convenes in the coming days.

The deputies “should openly declare their stance in line with their earlier decision not to go to parliament if even one of them is missing”, it said, according to Anatolia news agency.

The statement also urged Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and parliament to find a way to reverse the ruling.

The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which backed Dicle’s candidacy and is part of the DTK, said it would convene today to evaluate the situation.

The electoral board’s ruling “is a decision to drag Turkey into chaos … to push our people into an environment of conflict”, Anatolia quoted DTK chairman Ahmet Turk as saying.

Ankara, he charged, is “trying to block (Kurdish) efforts to create a democratic political ground” for a peaceful end to the Kurdish conflict.

Adding to the tensions, a landmine explosion hit a police car in the eastern province of Tunceli, killing two officers, security sources said, pointing an accusing finger at the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, has carried out similar attacks in the past as part of a separatist insurgency that has resulted in some 45,000 deaths since 1984.

Eager to boost its EU bid, Turkey has broadened Kurdish freedoms in recent years.

The Kurds, however, have upped the stakes, demanding constitutional recognition and autonomy.

On Monday, the PKK announced tough conditions for Ankara for the extension of a unilateral truce it had declared last August until the June 12 elections.

Dicle was among candidates that the BDP, which is close to the PKK, fielded as independents to get around a 10% national threshold for parties.

The Higher Electoral Board ruled on Tuesday that the 57-year-old was not eligible to run because of a 20-month jail term he had received for a speech deemed “propaganda for an armed terrorist organisation” – a reference to the PKK.

The legal jumble arose from the fact that the Appeals Court upheld Dicle’s sentence just four days before the polls, when the list of candidates had been confirmed.

Dicle’s seat went to a candidate from the ruling Justice and Development Party, which will now have 327 seats in the 550-member house.

In 1991, Dicle was among the first group of Kurdish nationalists to enter Turkey’s parliament. They were banished from politics in 1994 over links to the PKK.

Dicle landed in jail, along with several colleagues, among them activist Leyla Zana who also won a seat in the June 12 polls. They were released in 2004.

Dicle was arrested again last year as part of a massive probe into PKK collaborators.

via Gulf Times – Qatar’s top-selling English daily newspaper – Europe/World.