The death sentence on Mr Abdullah Ocalan, which reverberated around Turkey and raised fears of Kurdish activist violence in western Europe, drew an immediate international response yesterday.
EU leaders said carrying out the sentence would harm Turkey's prospects of joining the Union, while the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, expressed concern over the legal standards of the trial.
In a statement, Mrs Robinson said Mr Ocalan had been subjected to 10 days of detention incommunicado, that his access to lawyers was severely limited, that lawyer-client confidentiality had been breached and that his lawyers were threatened and harassed.
She also expressed concern about the independence and impartiality of the trial judges. The Council of Europe urged Turkey not to execute Mr Ocalan, noting that Ankara had agreed with other Council members to abolish or suspend the death penalty.
The European Commission made a similar call, reviving concerns that the verdict would further damage Turkey's EU membership bid.
External Relations Commissioner, Mr Hans van den Broek, said the bloc opposed the death penalty "and hopes that the relevant authorities in Turkey take the EU's position into account".
French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ms Anne Gazeau-Secret told reporters that not executing the death sentence passed on Ocalan "would be in keeping with Turkey's European calling and anchoring which we want to see strengthened".
She said that France and its EU partners opposed the death penalty as a matter of principle and recalled that Ankara had not carried out a death penalty for 15 years.
The Italian Prime Minister, Mr Massimo D'Alema, speaking from Brazil where he is attending the Rio summit, said Ankara risked distancing itself from Europe. The Foreign Minister, Mr Lamberto Dini, said Italy would lodge an appeal with the Council of Europe in an attempt to block an eventual execution.
Russia urged Turkey not to carry out the death sentence, saying such a move would breach Turkey's commitments as a member of the Council of Europe. Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Vladimir Rakhmanin, said he hoped "the high principles of humanity" would not be breached.
The White House branded Mr Ocalan an "international terrorist", but US officials would not comment on the death sentence against the separatist rebel.
"We have long believed that Ocalan is an international terrorist who should be brought to justice," White House spokesman Mr Joe Lockhart told reporters.
"There is an automatic appeal here so the judicial process is still going on and I am not going to comment" ahead of a final ruling, he said, citing a request by Ocalan's lawyers not to comment on the sentence.
Britain's Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, said the European Union had already made it clear that a decision to execute Ocalan would be profoundly damaging for Turkey's relations with the EU, he said. He said formal representations for clemency were unlikely to be made before the judicial process had been exhausted.