12th HEARING OF KURDISH M.P.s RETRIAL: LEYLA ZANA AND COLLEAGUES REFUSE TO ATTEND

The 12th hearing of the retrial of the Kurdish former members of parliament of the Party for Democracy (DEP — banned) took place on 12 March but for the first time without Leyla Zana and her colleagues. The former M.P.s refused to appear before the Ankara N°1 State Security Court to protest at this retrial where their fate has been already decided beforehand. The President of the Court, Orhan Karadeniz, after receiving the official document testifying the expressed determination of the former M.P.s, decided to continue the trial.

A delegation of the European Parliament, consisting of Feleknas Uca and Luici Vinci, as well as Philip Kaplan, Chairman of the political department of the US Embassy and of Kurdish political public figures and members of the M.P.s’ families were nevertheless present in the courtroom.

In the course of the hearing, a deposition by one Ali Dursun, jailed in Bursa Prison and obtained by the Bursa Criminal Court, was read out. This witness categorically denied the remarks by his father, Abdullah Dursun, a “village protector” chief, who had accused Leyla Zana of having forced his son to join the PKK. The person concerned declared that he was most upset that his name had been so misused by his own father, that his only knew of Leyla Zana through the press and that in no way had he been forced to join the PKK. He also stated that, during his 21 days in detention, considerable pressure had been brought to bear on him to testify against the former DEP M.P.s.

The principal lawyer for the defence, Mr. Yusuf Alatas, for his part, placed before the Court a statement clarifying the reasons that had driven the ex-M.P.s to refusing to appear before the court. He thus stated that the former M.P.s did not believe this was an equitable and impartial trial, though they had never adopted an offensive attitude towards the judges. He also stated that they had done everything possible to remain within the legal framework and not spill over into the political field in this case.

Yusuf Alatas confirmed that Leyla Zana and her colleagues would no longer attend the future hearings of the court, but that their lawyers would be present to defend them as well as they could, even if they could not fill the gap made by their absence.

The Public Prosecutor, Dilaver Kahveci, once against spoke against any release on bail of the former M.P.s and called for them to be found guilty then and there, claiming that no fresh evidence in their favour had been produced during the previous hearings.

Once again the court, unsurprisingly, rejected the request for them to be released on bail and adjourned the next hearing of the trial to 2 April. The court should then go on to the last hearing for Leyla Zana and her colleagues, who have now spent 10 years in the Ankara Central Jail.

On 2 March, the tenth anniversary of their imprisonment, their families had gone to the Ankara prison with some bouquets of flowers. The prison staff refused to give the bouquets to the prisoners and had “placed the flowers in detention”.

In a draft report presented by MEP Arie Oostlander on 16 March and adopted by the Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Commission, the European Parliament “deplores the manner in which the retrial of Leyla Zana, Sakharov Prize holder, and the three other ex-M.P.s of the DEP, is taking place and see this as a symbol of the rift between the Turkish legal system and that of the European Union”.

 
LEGAL HARASSMENTOF HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS IN TURKEY
 
The Diyarbekir Public Prosecutor has stated a legal investigations against Selahattin Demirtas, President of the Diyarbekir Branch of the Turkish Association for Human Rights (IHD), Ali Öncü, spokesman of the Diyarbekir Democratic Platform, Emir Ali Simsek, General Secretary of the Teachers Union (SES) and Bülent Kaya, President of the Clerical Workers Union (BES) on the basis of Article 312/2 of the Penal Code incriminating actions “inciting hatred and animosity in the heart of the people on the grounds of differences of class, race, religionor region”. The speakers had only spoken in support of a peaceful and democratic resolution on the Kurdish question in Turkey as well as in favour of a general amnesty, during a demonstration and concert organised on 21 June last in Diyarbekir. A first hearing of the Diyarbekir State Security Court on 17 February last had postponed the trial to 27 April to hear the defence of Selahattin Demirtas.

Article 312 is an integral part of the legal panoply used in the past for repression against defenders of Human Rights, political activists, writers and journalists and all those who expressed their criticisms or called for a solution to the Kurdish problem in the country. The first harmonisation package adopted on 6 February 2002 had added an additional clause to this measure stipulating that such speeches were henceforth punishable if made “in such a way as to endanger public order”.Another amendment to Article 312 allows the incrimination of “whosoever insults a section of the public in a way considered degrading or liable to undermine human dignity”.

Despite these amendments, the Human Rights Association (IHD) remains very concerned that the retention of imprecise terminology in Article 312 allows Turkey to incriminate the legitimate exercise of internationally recognised and protected rights — such as the right to peaceful assembly, the right to take part in public affairs — and to violate the right of peaceful expression of non-violent opinions.

Furthermore, on 17 March the Diyarbekir N°1 and N°2 Criminal Courts conducted hearing of several Human Rights defenders. Sezgin Tanrikulu, President of the Diyarbekir Human Rights Foundation, Eren Keskin, President of the Istanbul Human Rights Association, and Pinar Selek, a sociologist are thus being charged for statements made in the course of a symposium organised in 2001 on the basis of Article 159/1 of the Turkish Penal Code (insults to the Armed Forces). The hearing was postponed to 31 March because of the absence of the sociologist, Pinar Selek (victim of a serious motor accident last year, and still convalescent).

Selahattin Demirtas, President of the local IHD Committee, Firat Anli, a representative of the pro-Kurdish DEHAP party and at present candidate for the Sur quarter of Diyarbekir, Edip Yasar, spokesman of the KESK Trade Union, and Mehmet Ata, President of the Özgür Parti, as well as three other Trade Union and political activists, are also be charged in the context of another case, initiated on the basis of Article 28/2 of Law 2911, regarding meetings and demonstrations. These latter had organised a demonstration in Diyarbekir on 1 September 2003, for World Peace Day, which spontaneously turned into a concert. The authorities accuse them of not having authorisation for their meeting continuing until 8.30 p.m. …The trial has been set of 19 March.
 

ARTICLE 8 OF ANTI-TERROR ACT, REPEALED ON PAPER, CONTINUES TO BE APPLIED

While Article 8 of the Anti-Terrorist Act has been officially repealed in Turkey as part of the harmonisation package to secure membership of the European Union, it remains, in effect, still applied by the Turkish Courts. Thus the 23 books of the Turkish sociologist Ismail Besikci, condemned and banned under Article 8 are still being sanctioned by the spirit of this Article, even after its repeal, according to N°1 State Security Court. The Turkish publishing house Yurt Kitap Yayin having applied to N°1 State Security Court for permission to republish these books after the repeal of the law, was refused permission by this court. Ankara N°2 State Security Court, applied to in turn, ruled by lifting the ban on only eight of the books, maintaining the ban on the other 15, stating that the latter still contained breaches of current legislation. The condemned books mostly deal with the Kurdish question. The Court accuses the incriminated books of either undermining the memory of Ataturk (Ed. Note: for example in the book “An intellectual, an organisation and the Kurdish question”) or of conducting separatist propaganda (Ed. Note: for example in a book on the Kurdish playwright Musa Anter, assassinated by Death Squads at the age of 80).