TURKEY’S ARMY HINTS AT PROSECUTING DEPUTY OVER KURDISH SPEECH
PanARMENIAN.Net
27.02.2009 19:25 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey’s powerful military suggested on Friday that
prosecutors should take action against a Kurdish politician who broke
the law by delivering a speech in the Kurdish language in parliament.
Kurds have long suffered official discrimination, including a ban
on the public use of their language. In 1991, Leyla Zana, a Kurdish
politician, caused uproar in parliament when she attempted to take
her oath in Kurdish. Her immunity was stripped and she served 10
years in prison on other charges.
On Tuesday, Turkey’s state television cut off live broadcasting when
another politician, Ahmet Turk, addressed members of his Democratic
Society Party (DTP) in Kurdish.
The ruling AK Party and nationalists have called Turk’s speech a
"provocation". On Friday, the military, which has a long history of
intervening in Turkish politics and is fighting PKK militants in the
south-east, weighed in.
"Turkey is a country with a rule of law. Everybody has to act in line
with the constitution and its laws. It is natural for the judiciary to
take steps against those who exceed the boundaries of the law," General
Metin Gurak, a military spokesman, told a weekly news conference.
As a member of parliament, Turk has immunity from
prosecution. Parliament would have to strip him of this before he
could face any court case. Parliament Speaker Koksal Toptan has said
he did not plan to open a disciplinary case.
The DTP, which has 21 members in parliament, faces closure by the
Constitutional Court on charges it has links to the PKK.
Analysts have said Turk’s speech was aimed at voters. Turkey holds
municipal elections on March 29, and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s
AK Party is aggressively campaigning to win votes from the DTP in
the Kurdish southeast of the country.
Erdogan has won the respect of many Kurds by using Kurdish words in
rallies, and the launch of a Kurdish state channel in January was
seen as a breakthrough in expanding Kurdish rights, Reuters reported.