Turkey Jails Human Rights Activist

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at locust.etext.org>
Subject: Turkey Jails Human Rights Activist For 23 Years

Turkey Jails Blind Rights Activist For 23 Years 

     ANKARA (October 23, 1997 Reuters) - Turkey jailed a blind
52-year-old human rights activist for up to 23 years for
advocating a peaceful end to the country's bloody Kurdish
conflict, Anatolian news agency said.
     The justice ministry sent Esber Yagmurdereli to Cankiri
prison, 60 miles northeast of the capital Ankara, the state-run
agency said late on Tuesday.
     Yagmurdereli was sentenced to 10 months in jail in September
for a speech he made in 1991 calling for a peaceful end to the
Kurdish conflict, now 13 years old.
     The 10-month term was added to 22 years of an earlier
suspended sentence that was automatically reactivated following
his second conviction last month.
     Yagmurdereli's arrest sparked on Monday a condemnation from
Germany, which has a Turkish population of some two million. The
German foreign ministry described the event as a "further setback
for freedom of expression and tolerance in Turkey".
     The Turkish foreign ministry on Wednesday dismissed the
condemnation, saying the jail term was a decision of an
independent judicial body, the agency said.
     "It does not matter whether other authorities like it or
not. No official body is in a position to comment about decisions
of independent and free courts," the agency quoted ministry
spokesman Omer Akbel as saying.
     Ankara's shaky human rights record has drawn sharp criticism
from the West.
     Turkish author Yasar Kemal, who received a prestigious
German literary award earlier this week, said he would fight for
Yagmurdereli's release. "I will keep up my struggle for human
rights and democracy in Turkey," Anatolian quoted him as saying.
     German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel issued a fresh warning
to Turkey on Wednesday, saying Ankara's ambitions to join the
European Union would remain blocked unless it improved its rights
record.
     "Turkey knows that the route to Europe only follows a
significant improvement in the human rights situation there,"
Kinkel said in a statement after Tuesday's sentencing to a jail
term of human rights campaigner Akin Birdal.
     The 13-year-old bloody conflict between Turkish troops and
Kurdish separatist rebels, fighting for self-rule in the
southeast, has claimed 27,000 lives in the country so far.
     The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a
statement faxed to Reuters on Wednesday that 45 journalists were
now held in Turkish prisons, up from 78 in July, after 
the government issued a partial amnesty for imprisoned 
reporters in August.
     All but five of those released were set free after
completing their sentences, the committee said.

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