Turkey Leading Pro-Kurdish Party Wi

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Subject: Turkey Leading Pro-Kurdish Party Will Participate in Election


Turkey Leading Pro-Kurdish Party Will Participate in Election
      By Aliza Marcus

    ANKARA, Turkey (Reuter) - Turkey's biggest pro-Kurdish party said Tuesday
it would take part in an impending general election despite fears the early
December timetable and pressure from security forces will blunt its chances
for success.

    ``Despite the anti-democratic nature of these elections, and the pressure
our party has faced from the state, we realised our constituents wanted us to
take part,'' Ismail Aslan, assistant head of the People's Democracy Party
(HADEP), told Reuters.

    HADEP's decision to contest the Dec. 24 election means the return to
Turkish politics of nationalist Kurds for the first time since MPs from a
predecessor party were ousted from parliament in 1994. Six were later jailed
for ``separatism.''

    The party's platform revolves round an open call for Kurdish cultural and
political rights in a country where writing a book about Kurdish history can
mean a jail sentence for ``separatism'' and where Kurdish-language broadcasts
are banned.

    But HADEP, whose three predecessor parties were closed by the
constitutional court for separatism because of statements in favor of Kurdish
rights, faces a number of obstacles to getting into parliament.

    The party, which analysts say commands strong support among the roughly
four million people in the mainly Kurdish southeast, may have trouble getting
voters to the ballot boxes in a region where snow can close villages for much
of the year.

    Party officials will be campaigning in an area where Turkish security
forces wield practically total control because of an 11-year-old separatist
Kurdish guerrilla war for autonomy or independence.

    Human rights activists say hundreds of thousands of Kurds, potential
HADEP supporters, have been forcibly evacuated from their villages by
security forces intent on breaking ties between the people and the
guerrillas.

    New voters and people changing their voting district have only until Nov.
9 to register.

    Most HADEP offices in the southeast have been shut, with people afraid
openly to support a party that hardliners in the Turkish government say is a
front for rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

    ``Soldiers block HADEP from many parts of the region, but we should use
these elections as a way to show the repression of the Turkish state,'' said
Ishak Tepe, a party official who fled the southeast after, he said, he had
received death threats from the security forces.

    At least 104 officials from HADEP and its predecessor parties -- the
first pro-Kurdish People's Labor Party (HEP) in Turkey was formed in 1990 --
have been mysteriously murdered.

    During the 1991 general elections, the streets of the southeast were
often thronged with supporters of the HEP, which won 22 seats by joining
forces with the social democrats before the elections.

    But by late March 1994, when local elections were held, one Kurdish MP
had been murdered, six were in detention and the pro-Kurdish party decided to
boycott polls to protest against conditions.

    That tactic may have backfired. Although Kurdish activists say many
people boycotted the elections, the pro-Islamic Welfare Party swept the polls
and critics accused the party of staying out because it was afraid it would
lose.

    ``It's not possible to have free elections in this situation,'' said
Abdulemelik Firat, an independent Kurdish parliamentarian.

    ``But if the people want us to run, then we should,'' he said.

Turkey Protests To Russia Over Kurdish Meeting
      ANKARA, Oct 31 (Reuter) - Turkey said on Tuesday it had protested to
Russia about a meeting in Moscow of a Kurdish ``parliament-in-exile'' which
includes representatives of rebels fighting for self-rule in southeast
Turkey.

    ``This development has cast a shadow over Turkish-Russian relations and
we see this as something injurious,'' foreign ministry spokesman Omer Akbel
said in a statement.

    Akbel said the protest was made to the Russian Ambassador in Ankara.

    The Kurdish group started a three-day session on Monday in Moscow. The
meeting was organised by a Russian parliament committee.

    The Kurds inaugurated the group in The Hague last April, sparking a
diplomatic incident between the Netherlands and Ankara.

    The elected 65-seat assembly draws its members from exiled Kurds,
including members of Turkey's outlawed pro-Kurdish Democracy Party (DEP) and
the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

    The Kurdish group wants Turkey to start talks with the PKK to end the
11-year-old conflict in which more than 18,000 people have died.

Turkish Court Begins Review of Terror Law Cases
      ANKARA, Turkey (Reuter) - A Turkish court Tuesday began reviewing cases
of people charged or convicted under a tough anti-terror law with an eye
toward lightening their sentences in line with amendments in parliament last
week, prosecutors said.

    The chief prosecutor at Diyarbakir state security court said the court
had begun to look at the cases of 58 people charged or convicted under
Article 8 of the anti-terror law.

    ``According to the new amendments, when the sentences are reduced ...
they can be suspended and converted to fines if the defendant does not have a
criminal record,'' Bekir Selcuk told the Anatolian news agency in the
southeastern city.

    He said Turkish courts had been given up to one month to review Article 8
cases. He did not mention the possibility of cases being dropped, nor did he
say if other security courts had begun a similar review.

    Under the amended law, the maximum prison sentences were dropped to three
years from five, jail terms can be commuted to fines or suspended and courts
must prove the defendent intended to disrupt the territorrial unity of the
Turkish republic.

    Article 8, banning ``separatist propaganda,'' has in Europe become a
symbol of Turkey's alleged abuse of human rights. Members of the European
Parliament have said they would oppose a customs union with Ankara unless
real changes are instituted.

    The law has been used to jail scores of writers, lawyers, and others who
demanded broader freedoms for Turkey's Kurdish minority or criticised alleged
abuses.

    Pressure from European allies was seen as the catalyst that led
parliament to approve the changes, which will allow many of the some 100
people now in prison to be released.

    But many analysts say the changes are cosmetic, and do little to widen
freedom of expression in Turkey, charging the reforms will not prevent people
going to jail for things they say or write.


"Reporters Without Borders" Criticizes New Press Law
      PARIS (Reuter) - A press watchdog group Tuesday criticized changes
agreed by the Turkish parliament to an anti-terror law, saying the ``minor
amendment'' did almost nothing to loosen restrictions on freedom of
expression.

    Dubbing the change a ``true false reform,'' Reporters Without Borders
(RsF) said in a statement it believed the amendment was a ``purpose-made
cosmetic measure aimed at enabling ratification of the customs union by the
European Parliament.''

    Turkey's parliament last Friday accepted the changes, paving the way for
the release of intellectuals, lawyers and politicians convicted for publicly
demanding greater rights for the country's 10 million Kurds.

    The changes, sponsored by Prime Minister Tansu Ciller and championed by
her social democratic allies, allows for reduced jail terms or freedom for
those already convicted under the law.

    Turkey's partners in the European Union had for months been seeking the
changes in return for a lucrative customs union worked out early this year.

    But some in the European parliament had sought broader changes such as
gutting or even scrapping the 1991 law that bans ``separatist propaganda.''

    It is not yet clear if the changes will satisfy them.

    The Paris-based RsF said the amendment did nothing to change the fact
that people can be tried for their opinions.

    It said written and oral propaganda, as well as meetings and
demonstrations ``aimed at damaging the indivisible unity'' of the Turkish
republic were still punishable offenses.

    The group also noted that the maximum prison sentence under article 8 of
the 1991 law had been reduced to between one and three years from between two
and five years previously, but the principle of sentencing offenders to
prison had been retained.

    Although article 8 has become ``a symbol of the struggle for freedom of
expression,'' there are many other laws and articles of the penal code and
constitutional provisions which represent a threat to freedon, the group
said.

    It cited the case of Reuter correspondent Aliza Marcus, who it said was
not charged under article 8 of the anti-terrorist law but under article 312
of the criminal code.

    Earlier this month a Turkish security court rejected a call to drop the
case, which stemmed from a Nov. 25, 1994, story referring to forcible
evacuation of Kurdish villages as part of a military strategy against
separatist Kurdish guerrillas in southeast Turkey.


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 * Origin: APS Amsterdam (aps.nl), bbs +31-20-6842147 (16:31/2.0)