DATE=6/30/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=TURKEY / HADEP (L-ONLY)
NUMBER=2-263942
BYLINE=AMBERIN ZAMAN
DATELINE=ANKARA
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Turkish authorities recently have stepped up
pressure on Turkey's largest legal pro-Kurdish party,
Hadep. This follows a pledge by Turkish Prime
Minister Bulent Ecevit not -- as he put it -- to allow
the Kurds to carry their battle onto the political
field. Amberin Zaman interviewed Hadep chairman Ahmet
Turan Demir in Ankara and filed this report.
TEXT: Pressure is nothing new for Turkey's largest
legal pro-Kurdish party, Hadep. Over the past few
years, leading party officials have been arrested and
jailed. The party headquarters has been raided and
shut down, and thousands of its members beaten and
detained.
With Turkey's acceptance as an official candidate for
full membership by European Union leaders in Helsinki
last year, both Western governments and human-rights
groups have expressed hopes that Prime Minister Bulent
Ecevit's coalition government will take concrete steps
towards fulfilling Kurdish demands for greater rights.
If anything, analysts say Turkish authorities have
stepped up pressure on Kurdish groups. Over the past
week alone, scores of Hadep members were detained, for
protesting against the death penalty handed down a
year ago to Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the
separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, better known as
the P-K-K.
Many Kurds say they see a link between the arrests and
recent comments by Mr. Ecevit during his trip to the
largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir earlier in June.
Mr. Ecevit indirectly accused Hadep of being what he
termed a "racist" party, and described Kurdish
attempts to win rights through political means as even
more dangerous than the P-K-K's often ruthless 15-year
armed campaign for Kurdish independence.
Hadep chairman Ahmet Turan Demir is an ethnic
Circassian from the central Anatolian province of
Sivas. He denies that his party has a racist agenda.
/// 1ST DEMIR ACT IN TURKISH-ESTABLISH & FADE UNDER ///
Mr. Demir says neither he nor his party take Prime
Minister Ecevit's comments seriously. Mr. Demir sees
the current crackdown on Hadep as part of a broader
struggle between those who favor democracy and
European Union membership, and those within what he
terms the "deep state," who stand to lose their power
base if the status quo is disrupted.
Mr. Demir picks his words carefully, for he, too, is
facing five separate legal cases in which he is
charged with separatism. He has already been
sentenced convicted to four years in prison for
various speeches he made in which he touched upon the
Kurdish problem.
Mr. Demir acknowledges, however, that his party does
have an image problem. He says that most Turks see
Hadep as a party that struggles only for Kurdish
rights. That image has resulted in a legal move to
close the party on charges that it is acting as the
political arm of the P-K-K.
/// 2ND DEMIR ACT IN TURKISH-ESTABLISH & FADE UNDER ///
Mr. Demir says Hadep is seeking to become what he
terms a party for the whole of Turkey, and is holding
talks with different political parties, labor unions
and other non-governmental organizations to find ways
to work together to help promote democracy.
Still, Mr. Demir says that Hadep's core mission must
and will remain campaigning for greater rights for the
country's estimated 12-million Kurds.
/// 3RD DEMIR ACT IN TURKISH-ESTABLISH & FADE UNDER ///
Mr. Demir warns that should the Turkish state fail to
take concrete steps in the near future toward meeting
Kurdish demands -- whether for broadcasting, or
education in their own language, or for economic
investment in their poverty stricken regions -- the
armed rebellion called off by Abdullah Ocalan last
year could resume. (Signed)
NEB/AZ/GE/WTW
30-Jun-2000 12:30 PM EDT (30-Jun-2000 1630 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
|
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
|
|
|
