TURKEY:A Kurdish politician has been sentenced to six months' imprisonment for referring to jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan as "Mr Ocalan", Turkish court officials said yesterday.
The court said the use of the title "Mister" implied respect for Ocalan, considered a terrorist in Turkey for masterminding a decades-long separatist revolt in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
It is the second jail sentence in a matter of days meted out to Ahmet Turk, leader of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP).
Mr Turk is appealing against an 18-month sentence imposed last week for praising Ocalan. As a party leader, Mr Turk has influence over public opinion, said the court in Diyarbakir, the largest city of the southeast. Diyarbakir's head prosecutor had requested a two-year jail term for Mr Turk.
The convictions of Mr Turk on such charges are the latest in a series of judicial and political incidents that have caused some observers to question Turkey's compatibility with the values of political freedom and freedom of speech espoused by the European Union. Turkey's main long-term foreign policy objective is to join the union.
A spokesman for the European Commission declined to comment when asked yesterday about Mr Turk's conviction. The spokesman said it would have to be studied before any comment could be made, possibly today.
In last week's court case, Mr Turk and his deputy, Aysel Tugluk, were each sentenced to 18 months in prison over the distribution of DTP leaflets in the Kurdish language. Turkish law allows distribution of political literature only in Turkish.
The DTP campaigns for more cultural and political rights for Turkey's estimated 12-15 million Kurds. Turkish nationalists say it is a mouthpiece for Ocalan's banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and say it should be banned, as previous pro-Kurdish parties have been. Ankara blames Ocalan and the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.
Ocalan, captured in 1999, is serving a life sentence in isolation on an island near Istanbul. On Monday the government said a team of doctors was conducting medical tests on Ocalan in a bid to disprove claims by his lawyers that he is being poisoned.
- (Reuters/ Jamie Smyth in Brussels)